Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior
August 1, 2026
Matteo Fecchio, David R Schreier, Morgan K Cambareri et al.
Early detection of consciousness in critically ill patients with severe brain injuries can profoundly impact prognostication and clinical care decisions. Advanced multimodal protocols to detect signs of consciousness include standardized behavioral assessments, task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and task-based electroencephalography (EEG). However, these approaches have...
Neuroimage
May 15, 2025
Aya Khalaf, Erick Lopez, Jian Li et al.
6 citations
Subcortical arousal systems are known to play a key role in controlling sustained changes in attention and conscious awareness. Recent studies indicate that these systems have a major influence on short-term dynamic modulation of visual attention, but their role across sensory modalities is not fully understood. In this study, we investigated shared subcortical arousal systems across sensory...
Neurology
February 25, 2025
David Fischer, Brian L Edlow, Holly J Freeman et al.
9 citations
Determining the level of consciousness in patients with brain injury-and more fundamentally, establishing what they can experience-is ethically and clinically impactful. Patient behaviors may unreliably reflect their level of consciousness: a subset of unresponsive patients demonstrate covert consciousness by willfully modulating their brain activity to commands through fMRI or EEG. However,...
Nature and Science of Sleep
2025
David R Schreier, Matteo Fecchio, Christian S Guay et al.
Dexmedetomidine (DEX) is a well-tolerated sedative drug that induces a sleep-like state. DEX sedation offers a model to study transitions between different states of consciousness (indicated by, eg, behavior, the electroencephalogram (EEG), or transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) evoked EEG responses). However, the effects of repeated DEX exposure on recovery are poorly understood and will...
Science Translational Medicine
May 1, 2024
Brian L Edlow, Mark Olchanyi, Holly J Freeman et al.
39 citations
Consciousness is composed of arousal (i.e., wakefulness) and awareness. Substantial progress has been made in mapping the cortical networks that underlie awareness in the human brain, but knowledge about the subcortical networks that sustain arousal in humans is incomplete. Here, we aimed to map the connectivity of a proposed subcortical arousal network that sustains wakefulness in the human...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 13, 2023
Brian L Edlow, Mark Olchanyi, Holly J Freeman et al.
preprint
Consciousness is comprised of arousal (i.e., wakefulness) and awareness. Substantial progress has been made in mapping the cortical networks that modulate awareness in the human brain, but knowledge about the subcortical networks that sustain arousal is lacking. We integrated data from ex vivo diffusion MRI, immunohistochemistry, and in vivo 7 Tesla functional MRI to map the connectivity of a...
bioRxiv
July 14, 2021
Jian Li, W. Curley, B. Guérin et al.
preprint
The default mode network (DMN) mediates self-awareness and introspection, core components of human consciousness. Therapies to restore consciousness in patients with severe brain injuries have historically targeted subcortical sites in the brainstem, thalamus, hypothalamus, basal forebrain, and basal ganglia, with the goal of reactivating cortical DMN nodes. However, the subcortical...