Neural complexity is a common denominator of human consciousness across diverse regimes of cortical dynamics
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
What is the common denominator of consciousness across divergent regimes of cortical dynamics? Does consciousness show itself in decibels or in bits? To address these questions, we introduce a testbed for evaluating electroencephalogram (EEG) biomarkers of consciousness using dissociations between neural oscillations and consciousness caused by rare genetic disorders. Children with Angelman syndrome (AS) exhibit sleep-like neural dynamics during wakefulness. Conversely, children with duplication 15q11.2-13.1 syndrome (Dup15q) exhibit wake-like neural dynamics during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. To identify highly generalizable biomarkers of consciousness, we trained regularized logistic regression classifiers on EEG data from wakefulness and NREM sleep in children with AS using both entropy measures of neural complexity and spectral (i.e., neural oscillatory) EEG features. For each set of features, we then validated these classifiers using EEG from neurotypical (NT) children and abnormal EEGs from children with Dup15q. Our results show that the classification performance of entropy-based EEG biomarkers of conscious state is not upper-bounded by that of spectral EEG features, which are outperformed by entropy features. Entropy-based biomarkers of consciousness may thus be highly adaptable and should be investigated further in situations where spectral EEG features have shown limited success, such as detecting covert consciousness or anesthesia awareness.
Date Issued
2022-12-15
Date Acceptance
2022-12-01
Citation
Communications Biology, 2022, 5
ISSN
2399-3642
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Communications Biology
Volume
5
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022, corrected publication 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-04331-7
Subjects
ANESTHESIA
ANGELMAN-SYNDROME
Biology
BRAIN ACTIVITY
CHILDREN
EEG
INDEX
LEMPEL-ZIV COMPLEXITY
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Life Sciences & Biomedicine - Other Topics
Multidisciplinary Sciences
PERMUTATION ENTROPY
RESTING-STATE
Science & Technology
Science & Technology - Other Topics
TIME-SERIES
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
1374
Date Publish Online
2022-12-15