Article (Scientific journals)
Critical dynamics in spontaneous EEG predict anesthetic-induced loss of consciousness and perturbational complexity
Maschke, Charlotte; O’Byrne, Jordan; Colombo, Michele Angelo et al.
2024In Communications Biology, 7 (1)
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Keywords :
Adult; Anesthesia, General; Consciousness; Electroencephalography; Female; Humans; Ketamine; Male; Propofol; Unconsciousness; Young Adult; Medicine (miscellaneous); Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (all); Agricultural and Biological Sciences (all)
Abstract :
[en] Consciousness has been proposed to be supported by electrophysiological patterns poised at criticality, a dynamical regime which exhibits adaptive computational properties, maximally complex patterns and divergent sensitivity to perturbation. Here, we investigate dynamical properties of the resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) of healthy subjects undergoing general anesthesia with propofol, xenon or ketamine. Importantly, all participants were unresponsive under anesthesia, while consciousness was retained only during ketamine anesthesia (in the form of vivid dreams), enabling an experimental dissociation between unresponsiveness and unconsciousness. For each condition, we measure (i) avalanche criticality, (ii) chaoticity, and (iii) criticality-related metrics, revealing that states of unconsciousness are characterized by a distancing from both avalanche criticality and the edge of chaos. We then ask whether these same dynamical properties are predictive of the perturbational complexity index (PCI), a TMS-based measure that has shown remarkably high sensitivity in detecting consciousness independently of behavior. We successfully predict individual subjects’ PCI values with considerably high accuracy from resting-state EEG dynamical properties alone. Our results establish a firm link between perturbational complexity and criticality, and provide further evidence that criticality is a necessary condition for the emergence of consciousness.
Disciplines :
Neurosciences & behavior
Author, co-author :
Maschke, Charlotte;  Montreal General Hospital, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Canada ; Integrated Program in Neuroscience, McGill University, Montreal, Canada ; Cognitive & amp, Computational Neuroscience Lab, Psychology Department, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada
O’Byrne, Jordan;  Cognitive & amp, Computational Neuroscience Lab, Psychology Department, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada ; MILA (Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute), Montréal, Canada
Colombo, Michele Angelo;  Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
Boly, Mélanie ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Département des sciences cliniques > Neurologie ; Department of Neurology and Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, United States
Gosseries, Olivia  ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > GIGA > GIGA Neurosciences - Coma Science Group
Laureys, Steven  ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Département des sciences cliniques ; CERVO Brain Research Centre, Laval University, Laval, Canada ; Consciousness Science Institute, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China
Rosanova, Mario;  Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
Jerbi, Karim ;  Cognitive & amp, Computational Neuroscience Lab, Psychology Department, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada ; MILA (Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute), Montréal, Canada ; Centre UNIQUE (Union Neurosciences & amp, Intelligence Artificielle), Montréal, Canada
Blain-Moraes, Stefanie ;  Montreal General Hospital, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Canada ; School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Language :
English
Title :
Critical dynamics in spontaneous EEG predict anesthetic-induced loss of consciousness and perturbational complexity
Publication date :
December 2024
Journal title :
Communications Biology
eISSN :
2399-3642
Publisher :
Nature
Volume :
7
Issue :
1
Peer reviewed :
Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi
Funders :
CRCs - Canada Research Chairs
Funding text :
CM is funded through Fonds de recherche du Qu\u00E9bec\u2014Sant\u00E9 (FRQS). JOB is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and FRQS. OG is research associate and SL is research director at F.R.S-FNRS. SL is Research Director at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, Chairholder of the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Integrative Neuroscience for Sustainable Mental Health and funded by European Foundation of Biomedical Research FERB Onlus. K.J. was supported by funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program and a Discovery Grant (grant no. RGPIN-2015-04854) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), a New Investigators Award from the Fonds de recherche du Qu\u00E9bec en nature et technologies (FRQNT) (grant no. 2018-NC-206005), and an Institut de valorisation des donn\u00E9es (IVADO) fundamental research project grant funded through the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) program. SBM is supported by the Canada Research Chairs Program (Tier II). This research was funded through the FRQNT Strategic Clusters Program (2020-RS4-265502\u2014Centre UNIQUE\u2014Union Neurosciences & Artificial Intelligence\u2014Quebec, an NSERC Discovery Grant (RGPIN-2023-03619), the Canada Excellence Research Chairs Program (#215063), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (#408004), the ERA-Net FLAG-ERA JTC2021 project ModelDXConsciousness (Human Brain Project Partnering Project) and the NINDS grant 1K23NS112473. This research was undertaken thanks to funding from Fondazione Regionale per la Ricerca Biomedica (Regione Lombardia), Project PerBrain, call ERAPERMED2019\u2013101, GA 779282 (to MR), the Canada First Research Excellence Fund and Fonds de recherche du Que\u0301bec, awarded to the Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives initiative at McGill University.
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