Science (New York, N.Y.)
May 13, 2011
Melanie Boly, Marta Isabel Garrido, Olivia Gosseries et al.
Frontoparietal cortex is involved in the explicit processing (awareness) of stimuli. Frontoparietal activation has also been found in studies of subliminal stimulus processing. We hypothesized that an impairment of top-down processes, involved in recurrent neuronal message-passing and the generation of long-latency electrophysiological responses, might provide a more reliable correlate of...
Cognitive Neuroscience
July 1, 2010
Marcello Massimini, Fabio Ferrarelli, Michael J. Murphy et al.
205 citations
We recorded the electroencephalographic (EEG) responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during the first rapid eye movement (REM) sleep episode of the night and we compared them with the responses obtained during previous wakefulness and NREM sleep. Confirming previous findings, upon falling into NREM sleep, cortical activations became more local and stereotypical, indicating...
Progress in Brain Research
2009
Melanie Boly, Marcello Massimini, Giulio Tononi
50 citations
Assessing the level of consciousness of noncommunicative brain-damaged patients is difficult, as one has to make inferences based on the patients' behavior. However, behavioral responses of brain-damaged patients are usually limited not only by their cognitive dysfunctions, but also by their frequent motor impairment. For these reasons, it is essential to resort to para-clinical markers of the...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
May 1, 2008
Giulio Tononi, Marcello Massimini
135 citations
Consciousness fades during deep nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep early in the night, yet cortical neurons remain active, keep receiving sensory inputs, and can display patterns of synchronous activity. Why then does consciousness fade? According to the integrated information theory of consciousness, what is critical for consciousness is not firing rates, sensory input, or synchronization per...
Science
September 29, 2005
Marcello Massimini, Fabio Ferrarelli, Reto Huber et al.
1,603 citations
When we fall asleep, consciousness fades yet the brain remains active. Why is this so? To investigate whether changes in cortical information transmission play a role, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation together with high-density electroencephalography and asked how the activation of one cortical area (the premotor area) is transmitted to the rest of the brain. During quiet wakefulness,...