Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
June 30, 2020
Andrés Canales-Johnson, Alexander J Billig, Francisco A Olivares et al.
51 citations
During auditory bistable perception, a sequence of tones can be heard either as a single stream (integrated percept) or as two parallel streams (differentiated percept). Neural recordings showed that when perceptual alternations arose spontaneously, the integrated percept corresponded to increased neural information integration and decreased neural information differentiation across frontoparietal regions, while the differentiated percept showed the opposite pattern. When perception was driven by an external change in the sound stream, neural oscillatory power distinguished between percepts but information measures did not. The findings demonstrate that integration and differentiation of conscious perception map onto theoretically motivated neural information signatures, suggesting a direct link between phenomenology and neurophysiology.
PLoS Biology
October 1, 2025
Michele Angelo Colombo, Jacopo Favaro, Ezequiel Mikulan et al.
7 citations
After hemispherotomy surgery for epilepsy, which disconnects an entire brain hemisphere, the isolated cortex shows brainwave patterns typical of deep sleep or anesthesia, not wakefulness. In 10 pediatric patients, EEG recordings revealed prominent slow oscillations and a steeper spectral decay in the disconnected hemisphere, while the connected hemisphere maintained normal waking patterns. These sleep-like patterns persisted years after surgery, suggesting the isolated cortex likely lacks awareness.
arXiv Preprint Archive
October 7, 2025
Maria V. Sanchez-Vives, Arnau Manasanch, Andrea Pigorini et al.
The cerebral cortex generates diverse patterns of activity that shift across brain states such as sleep, wakefulness, anesthesia, and disorders of consciousness, yet a unified definition of brain states remains elusive. This review focuses on two extremes: synchronous states, which predominantly underlie unconsciousness, and asynchronous states, which predominantly underlie consciousness, though exceptions exist. The authors integrate data across levels from local circuits to whole-brain dynamics, examining properties like cortical complexity, functional connectivity, synchronization, wave propagation, and excitatory-inhibitory balance. They make experimental and clinical data, as well as computational models at micro-, meso-, and macrocortical levels, available to readers.
Neuroimage
April 1, 2018
Ezequiel Mikulan, Eugenia Hesse, Lucas Sedeño et al.
Gamma-band neural synchrony is thought to be important for cortical computation and consciousness, but prior evidence has been inconclusive due to methodological issues. By using intracranial EEG in three participants with implanted electrodes, researchers compared high-gamma connectivity (90-120 Hz) during passive wakefulness versus non-REM sleep. Connectivity and graph-theory measures were higher during wakefulness and distinguished the two states better than other frequency bands. This is the first intracranial EEG report of wake-sleep differences in high-gamma activity at both local and distant brain sites, highlighting the technique's value for studying neural correlates of consciousness.