Perturbations in dynamical models of whole-brain activity dissociate between the level and stability of consciousness
bioRxiv Preprint Server July 2, 2020 Yonatan Sanz Perl, Carla Pallavicini, Ignacio Pérez Ipiña et al. preprint
The level of consciousness—how conscious someone is—is often measured by how similar their brain activity is to normal wakefulness. However, this approach misses important information about how stable that state is. Using computer models of the whole brain, the authors show that the stability of a conscious state—how easily it can be disrupted—provides additional, complementary information. They propose a new framework that sorts brain states by both their similarity to wakefulness and their stability, which helps distinguish between different types of unconsciousness: natural sleep, anesthesia, and brain injury. This framework offers a more complete way to characterize and differentiate states of consciousness.