Science
September 7, 2006
Adrian M. Owen, Martin R. Coleman, Melanie Boly et al.
1,974 citations
A patient who met the clinical criteria for a vegetative state showed brain activity indistinguishable from healthy volunteers when asked to imagine playing tennis or moving around her home. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the patient activated the same predicted cortical areas as conscious individuals, indicating preserved conscious awareness despite appearing unresponsive. This finding suggests that some patients diagnosed as vegetative may retain covert consciousness that standard behavioral assessments cannot detect.
Science
March 2, 2007
Adrian M. Owen, Martin R. Coleman, Melanie Boly et al.
72 citations
Functional neuroimaging data indicate that brain activity patterns in a patient diagnosed as vegetative could not have occurred automatically without conscious awareness. The most straightforward explanation is that the patient was consciously aware despite the vegetative state diagnosis.
bioRxiv
November 26, 2020
Andrea I. Luppi, Pedro A.M. Mediano, Fernando E. Rosas et al.
49 citations
preprint
The brain coordinates information from many sources to create a unified conscious experience. Combining network science and information theory, the authors identify a “synergistic global workspace” where gateway regions gather synergistic information from specialized brain modules, integrate it, and then broadcast it widely via broadcaster regions. Functional MRI shows that gateway regions correspond to the default mode network and broadcasters to the executive control network. Loss of consciousness from general anesthesia or disorders of consciousness reduces the workspace’s ability to integrate information, which is restored upon recovery. This work reconciles aspects of the Global Neuronal Workspace and Integrated Information Theory.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
August 10, 2020
Andrea I. Luppi, Jakub Vohryzek, Morten L. Kringelbach et al.
26 citations
preprint
Consciousness arises from how the brain's structural wiring shapes its dynamic activity. By decomposing resting-state fMRI data into harmonic modes of the human structural connectome, a generalizable signature of lost consciousness emerges—whether from anesthesia or brain injury—while a reversed signature characterizes psychedelic states induced by LSD or ketamine, reflecting decoupling of function from structure. This connectome harmonic approach discriminates between behaviorally indistinguishable brain-injured patients and tracks covert consciousness, linking neurobiology to conscious experience.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 12, 2021
Peter Coppola, Lennart R.b. Spindler, Andrea I. Luppi et al.
preprint
The diversity of brain dynamics within small-world network topology, measured as sample entropy (dSW-E), consistently predicts levels of awareness across sedation and disorders of consciousness, even after accounting for underlying functional connectivity dynamics. Both subcortical and cortical areas show predictive value, but subcortical regions exhibit higher and more robust effect sizes. The dynamic reorganization of the functional information architecture, especially in the subcortex, emerges with awareness and offers explanatory power beyond the complexity of dynamic functional connectivity alone.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 7, 2026
Andrea I. Luppi, Dragana Manasova, Justine Y. Hansen et al.
preprint
Functional connectivity in the awake human brain is shaped primarily by cognitive co-activation—the tendency of brain regions to work together during mental tasks—more than by structural or molecular constraints. This predominance is systematically lost across five datasets involving pharmacological and pathological perturbations of consciousness (chronic disorders of consciousness; anesthesia with sevoflurane, propofol, or ketamine), when cognition is disconnected from the environment or abolished. During such states, the predictors of functional architecture shift away from cognitive co-activation and toward anatomical and molecular constraints.
NeuroImage
February 11, 2023
Andrea I. Luppi, Pedro A.M. Mediano, Fernando E. Rosas et al.
High-level brain functions are thought to arise from coordinated activity across neural systems, but this has been hard to test empirically. Using a framework called Integrated Information Decomposition, which quantifies emergence in dynamical systems, the authors analyzed functional MRI data and found that emergent and hierarchical neural dynamics are significantly reduced in chronically unresponsive patients with severe brain injury. Emergence capacity was positively correlated with hierarchical organization in brain activity. Combining network control theory and whole-brain modeling, the authors show that reduced emergent and hierarchical dynamics in these patients can be explained by disruptions in the structural connectome. The results suggest that chronic unresponsiveness after severe brain injury may stem from structural damage to neural infrastructure needed for emergent brain dynamics.