Author:

Keywords:

Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Neurosciences, Neuroimaging, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging, Neurosciences & Neurology, SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY, NEURONAL AVALANCHES, CORTICAL ACTIVITY, NETWORKS, CONSCIOUSNESS, RANGE, BRAIN, OSCILLATIONS, COHERENCE, MONKEYS, Anesthetics, Animals, Brain, Brain Mapping, Cats, Consciousness, Macaca fascicularis, Models, Neurological, Rats, Rats, Wistar, Voltage-Sensitive Dye Imaging, BEHAVING MONKEYS, INDUCED UNCONSCIOUSNESS, HUMAN BRAIN, 11 Medical and Health Sciences, 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, Neurology & Neurosurgery, 32 Biomedical and clinical sciences, 42 Health sciences

Abstract:

Critical dynamics are thought to play an important role in neuronal information-processing: near critical networks exhibit neuronal avalanches, cascades of spatiotemporal activity that are scale-free, and are considered to enhance information capacity and transfer. However, the exact relationship between criticality, awareness, and information integration remains unclear. To characterize this relationship, we applied multi-scale avalanche analysis to voltage-sensitive dye imaging data collected from animals of various species under different anesthetics. We found that anesthesia systematically varied the scaling behavior of neural dynamics, a change that was mirrored in reduced neural complexity. These findings were corroborated by applying the same analyses to a biophysically realistic cortical network model, in which multi-scale criticality measures were associated with network properties and the capacity for information integration. Our results imply that multi-scale criticality measures are potential biomarkers for assessing the level of consciousness.