AI Article Synopsis
- Scientists studied how our brain’s signals change with different levels of alertness and awareness.
- They found that a specific part of the brain (VPL) didn't work as much when people were less awake or aware, like during sleep or anesthesia.
- Interestingly, some patients who are awake but don’t respond still showed strong brain activity, while people in deep sleep had low awareness but were not as lively.
Article Abstract
Arousal and awareness are two components of consciousness whose neural mechanisms remain unclear. Spontaneous peaks of global (brain-wide) blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal have been found to be sensitive to changes in arousal. By contrasting BOLD signals at different arousal levels, we find decreased activation of the ventral posterolateral nucleus (VPL) during transient peaks in the global signal in low arousal and awareness states (non-rapid eye movement sleep and anesthesia) compared to wakefulness and in eyes-closed compared to eyes-open conditions in healthy awake individuals. Intriguingly, VPL-global co-activation remains high in patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS), who exhibit high arousal without awareness, while it reduces in rapid eye movement sleep, a state characterized by low arousal but high awareness. Furthermore, lower co-activation is found in individuals during N3 sleep compared to patients with UWS. These results demonstrate that co-activation of VPL and global activity is critical to arousal but not to awareness.
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Source |
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2023.113633 | DOI Listing |
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