Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 27, 2017
Michael Schartner, Andrea Pigorini, Steve A. Gibbs et al.
158 citations
During non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, neural dynamical complexity—measured by Lempel-Ziv complexity, amplitude coalition entropy, and synchrony coalition entropy—decreased substantially across broadly distributed brain regions in ten epilepsy patients. This decrease partially reversed during late-night NREM sleep and returned to wakeful rest levels during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Local brain regions mirrored this global pattern. The frontal lobe showed elevated signal complexity. These changes were not solely due to spectral power differences. The findings suggest that level of consciousness correlates with neural dynamical complexity.
PsyArXiv
April 13, 2025
Teresa Campillo-Ferrer, Antonella Iadarola, Ramona Cordani et al.
1 citation
preprint
During the transition from wakefulness to sleep, unusual bodily sensations and out-of-body experiences can be induced. A high-density EEG and neurophenomenology approach reveals specific brain activity patterns associated with these phenomena, suggesting that the brain's altered state during sleep onset may facilitate such experiences.
Consciousness and Cognition
February 11, 2026
Teresa Campillo-Ferrer, Antonella Iadarola, Ramona Cordani et al.
Unusual bodily experiences (UBEs)—illusory perceptions such as floating, body distortions, or out-of-body sensations—can occur during meditation and sleep. In a controlled sleep laboratory, 20 of 35 healthy participants reported 36 UBEs, primarily during meditation (wakefulness) but also during arousals, REM sleep, and non-REM sleep. Electroencephalography (EEG) analyses revealed that UBEs emerge during intermediate states of consciousness that combine features of wakefulness and sleep. Specifically, UBEs were associated with EEG reactivation: increased high-frequency activity (beta and gamma) and decreased low-frequency activity (delta and theta), especially around temporal regions. These findings offer new insights into the neural correlates of self-consciousness and body perception across sleep and wakefulness.
bioRxiv
December 7, 2023
Joseph Starkey, Robin L. Carhart-Harris, Andrea Pigorini et al.
preprint
A measure of 'statistical complexity' that calculates the diversity of statistical interactions in neural activity, removing randomness, was tested on human brain data from different sleep stages and from people under ketamine, LSD, and psilocybin. Statistical complexity differentiated sleep stages similarly to the standard Lempel-Ziv complexity measure and increased relative to placebo for all three psychedelic substances. The measure is a useful alternative for investigating neural activity complexity across states of consciousness.