bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
July 1, 2026
Fernando Lehue, Iván Mindlin, Carlos Coronel-Oliveros et al.
Abstract Disorders of consciousness (DoC) are associated with large-scale alterations in brain dynamics, yet the structural factors that constrain these changes remain unclear. Here, we investigate how the topology of the structural connectome shapes the sensitivity of brain dynamics to perturbation using a whole-brain computational model constrained by diffusion MRI-derived connectivity. We...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 7, 2026
Andrea I. Luppi, Dragana Manasova, Justine Y. Hansen et al.
preprint
Consciousness and cognition arise from the ongoing interactions between brain regions. Synchronous fluctuations of fMRI signals may indicate that two brain regions perform similar cognitive functions, but neural interactions are also constrained by anatomical connectivity and regions’ molecular, cytoarchitectonic, and metabolic profiles. Here we disentangle the respective contributions of...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 22, 2026
Nicolás Bruno, Federico Cavanna, Federico Zamberlán et al.
preprint
Spontaneous thoughts constitute most of everyday inner experience, yet long-standing methodological challenges obscure a thorough exploration of their content and neurophysiological underpinnings. Traditional approaches relying on thought probes impose strict constraints on phenomenological reports, whereas online verbal reports disrupt the natural flow of experience while interfering neural...
PNAS Nexus
March 1, 2026
Lina Jeantin, Pierre Bourdillon, Marc Guenot et al.
Electroencephalography (EEG) signal complexity reflects the richness of brain activity and is considered a marker of consciousness. However, its normative values across physiological conscious states using intracranial EEG (iEEG) across cortical areas remain poorly defined. We aimed at referencing iEEG complexity in the human brain and its links with global states of consciousness. We analyzed...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
January 13, 2026
Iván Mindlin, Carlos Coronel-Oliveros, Jacobo Sitt et al.
A main characteristic of biological systems is their capacity to dynamically adapt to environmental changes. In the brain, synaptic plasticity enables the strengthening or weakening of connections between neurons, allowing neural circuits to adapt based on experience, learning, and environmental changes. Yet, it is homeostatically regulated such that it avoids excessive proliferation of...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
December 27, 2025
Yayla A Ilksoy, Alethia de la Fuente, Jacobo Sitt et al.
Abstract It has been proposed that both conscious and unconscious perception are associated with a feedforward sweep of oscillatory activity in the gamma band (>40 Hz), while conscious perception also requires recurrent feedback via beta band ($\sim$20 Hz) oscillations. To investigate the causal relationship between these oscillations and (un)conscious visual perception, we assessed the effect...
Advanced Science
November 20, 2025
Paolo Cardone, Charlotte Martial, Yonatan Sanz Perl et al.
3 citations
Abstract Disorders of consciousness (DoC), including unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS), have limited treatment options and are characterized by low complexity of brain activity. Recent research suggests that psychedelic drugs, which enhance the complexity of brain activity, could offer promising therapies. Here, individualized whole‐brain computational...
Elife
October 13, 2025
Guylaine Hoffner, Pablo Castro, Lynn Uhrig et al.
The resting primate brain is traversed by spontaneous functional connectivity patterns that show striking differences between conscious and unconscious states. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive neuromodulatory technique, can improve signs of consciousness in disorders of consciousness (DOCs); however, can it influence both conscious and unconscious dynamic...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 3, 2025
Marian Martínez-Marín, Jakub Vohryzek, Anira Escrichs et al.
1 citation
preprint
Abstract Evaluating consciousness levels after coma remains clinically challenging, and probing the brain’s functional hierarchy offers model-based biomarkers of brain states. We characterize the hierarchy loss in disorders of consciousness (DoC) via departures from non-equilibrium dynamics. Irreversible, directed interactions are indexed by deviation from the fluctuation– dissipation theorem...
PLoS Computational Biology
June 6, 2025
Wiep Stikvoort, Eider Pérez-Ordoyo, Iván Mindlin et al.
3 citations
Assessing someone's level of consciousness is a complex matter, and attempts have been made to aid clinicians in these assessments through metrics based on neuroimaging data. Many studies have empirically investigated measures related to the complexity elicited after the brain is stimulated to quantify the level of consciousness across different states. Here we hypothesized that the level of...
PNAS Nexus
December 1, 2024
Emilia Fló, Laouen Belloli, Álvaro Cabana et al.
10 citations
Attention shapes our consciousness content and perception by increasing the probability of becoming aware and/or better encoding a selection of the incoming inner or outer sensory world. Engaging interoceptive and exteroceptive attention should elicit distinctive neural responses to visceral and external stimuli and could be useful in detecting covert command-following in unresponsive patients....
Communications Biology
September 30, 2024
Pablo Castro, Andrea I. Luppi, Enzo Tagliazucchi et al.
21 citations
Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging evolves through a repertoire of functional connectivity patterns which might reflect ongoing cognition, as well as the contents of conscious awareness. We investigated whether the dynamic exploration of these states can provide robust and generalizable markers for the state of consciousness in human participants, across loss of consciousness...
Interface Focus
April 14, 2023
Elvira G-Guzmán, Yonatan Sanz Perl, Jakub Vohryzek et al.
34 citations
Life is a constant battle against equilibrium. From the cellular level to the macroscopic scale, living organisms as dissipative systems require the violation of their detailed balance, i.e. metabolic enzymatic reactions, in order to survive. We present a framework based on temporal asymmetry as a measure of non-equilibrium. By means of statistical physics, it was discovered that temporal...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
March 21, 2023
Adrien Martel, Nicolás Bruno, Ian H. Robertson et al.
preprint
Abstract Mind-wandering is typically characterized by the common experience wherein attention veers off into thoughts unrelated to the task at hand. Recent research highlights the intentionality dimension of mind-wandering as a key predictor of adverse functional outcomes with intentional and unintentional task-unrelated thought (TUT) differentially linked to neural, behavioral, clinical, and...
Network Neuroscience
December 23, 2022
Gustavo Deco, Yonatan Sanz Perl, Laura De la Fuente et al.
43 citations
A promising idea in human cognitive neuroscience is that the default mode network (DMN) is responsible for coordinating the recruitment and scheduling of networks for computing and solving task-specific cognitive problems. This is supported by evidence showing that the physical and functional distance of DMN regions is maximally removed from sensorimotor regions containing environment-driven...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
September 28, 2022
Yonatan Sanz Perl, Carla Pallavicini, Juan Piccinini et al.
preprint
Brain states are frequently represented using a unidimensional scale measuring the richness of subjective experience (level of consciousness). This description assumes a mapping between the high-dimensional space of whole-brain configurations and the trajectories of brain states associated with changes in consciousness, yet this mapping and its properties remain unknown. We combined whole-brain...
Communications Biology
June 29, 2022
Anira Escrichs, Yonatan Sanz Perl, Carme Uribe et al.
67 citations
Significant advances have been made by identifying the levels of synchrony of the underlying dynamics of a given brain state. This research has demonstrated that non-conscious dynamics tend to be more synchronous than in conscious states, which are more asynchronous. Here we go beyond this dichotomy to demonstrate that different brain states are underpinned by dissociable spatiotemporal...
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior
September 1, 2021
Santiago Alcaide, Jacobo Sitt, Tomoyasu Horikawa et al.
13 citations
The brain mechanisms by which we transition from sleep to a conscious state remain largely unknown in humans, partly because of methodological challenges. Here we study a pre-existing dataset of waking up participants originally designed for a study of dreaming (Horikawa, Tamaki, Miyawaki, & Kamitani, 2013) and suggest that suddenly awakening from early sleep stages results from a two-stage...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
July 4, 2021
Gustavo Deco, Yonatan Sanz Perl, Jacobo Sitt et al.
16 citations
preprint
Abstract The complex intrinsic and extrinsic forces from the body and environment push the brain into non-equilibrium. The arrow of time, central to thermodynamics in physics, is a hallmark of non-equilibrium and serves to distinguish between reversible and non-reversible dynamics in any system. Here, we use a deep learning Temporal Evolution NETwork (TENET) framework to discover the asymmetry...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 2, 2020
Yonatan Sanz Perl, Carla Pallavicini, Ignacio Perez-Ipina et al.
preprint
Consciousness transiently fades away during deep sleep, more stably under anesthesia, and sometimes permanently due to brain injury. The development of an index to quantify the level of consciousness across these different states is regarded as a key problem both in basic and clinical neuroscience. We argue that this problem is ill-defined since such an index would not exhaust all the relevant...
Science Advances
February 1, 2019
Athena Demertzi, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Stanislas Dehaene et al.
545 citations
Adopting the framework of brain dynamics as a cornerstone of human consciousness, we determined whether dynamic signal coordination provides specific and generalizable patterns pertaining to conscious and unconscious states after brain damage. A dynamic pattern of coordinated and anticoordinated functional magnetic resonance imaging signals characterized healthy individuals and minimally...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
April 21, 2015
Aaron Schurger, Ioannis Sarigiannidis, Lionel Naccache et al.
According to recent evidence, stimulus-tuned neurons in the cerebral cortex exhibit reduced variability in firing rate across trials, after the onset of a stimulus. However, in order for a reduction in variability to be directly relevant to perception and behavior, it must be realized within trial--the pattern of activity must be relatively stable. Stability is characteristic of decision states...