Non-REM sleep and the neural correlates of consciousness: more than meets the eyes.
Archives italiennes de biologie September 1, 2018 U Olcese
The traditional view that non-REM sleep is a uniform state of unconsciousness is being challenged by recent findings. Slow oscillations, once considered exclusive to sleep, have been observed during wakefulness, and neural dynamics typical of conscious states have been detected during non-REM sleep. Additionally, the disconnection in cortical effective connectivity, long thought to be a hallmark of unconsciousness in non-REM sleep, appears less general than previously assumed. These findings complicate the search for neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) and suggest that the boundaries between conscious and unconscious brain activity may be more fluid than standard models propose.