Latin American Brain Health (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile; National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina; Cognitive Neuroscience Center (CNC), Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina; Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), University of California San Francisco (UCSF), USA.
2 papers in the library · 64 citations · publishing 2020-2021
During auditory bistable perception, a sequence of tones can be heard either as a single stream (integrated percept) or as two parallel streams (differentiated percept). Neural recordings showed that when perceptual alternations arose spontaneously, the integrated percept corresponded to increased neural information integration and decreased neural information differentiation across frontoparietal regions, while the differentiated percept showed the opposite pattern. When perception was driven by an external change in the sound stream, neural oscillatory power distinguished between percepts but information measures did not. The findings demonstrate that integration and differentiation of conscious perception map onto theoretically motivated neural information signatures, suggesting a direct link between phenomenology and neurophysiology.
Waking up from early sleep involves a two-stage brain process. First, subcortical and sensorimotor structures activate before most cortical regions, followed by rapid whole-brain activation, with frontal regions engaging slightly later. A second, slower stage may then occur, where cortical regions activate before subcortical structures and the cerebellum. This pattern suggests subcortical structures play a key role in initiating and maintaining conscious states.