bioRxiv Preprint Server
March 27, 2020
Thomas F. Varley, Olaf Sporns, Aina Puce et al.
3 citations
preprint
Whether the brain operates at a critical ‘‘tipping” point is a long standing scientific question, with evidence from both cellular and systems-scale studies suggesting that the brain does sit in, or near, a critical regime. Neuroimaging studies of humans in altered states of consciousness have prompted the suggestion that maintenance of critical dynamics is necessary for the emergence of...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
March 16, 2020
Steven F. Grieco, Xin Qiao, Xiaoting Zheng et al.
14 citations
preprint
Subanesthetic ketamine evokes rapid and long-lasting antidepressant effects in human patients. The mechanism for ketamine’s effects remains elusive, but ketamine may broadly modulate brain plasticity processes. We show that single-dose ketamine reactivates adult mouse visual cortical plasticity and promotes functional recovery of visual acuity defects from amblyopia. Ketamine specifically...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
March 11, 2020
M Wu, S Minkowicz, V Dumrongprechachan et al.
3 citations
preprint
Escaping aversive stimuli is essential for complex organisms, but prolonged exposure to stress leads to maladaptive learning. Stress alters plasticity, neuromodulatory signaling, and neuronal activity in distributed networks, yet the field lacks a unifying framework for its varied consequences. Here we describe neuromodulatory and plasticity changes following aversive learning by using a...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
February 23, 2020
X. Zhao, K. T. Meyers, A. Mcbride et al.
1 citation
preprint
Serotonin 2A receptors (5-HT2ARs) mediate the effects of hallucinogenic drugs and antipsychotic medications, and are reduced in schizophrenia patients’ brains. However, the mechanisms that regulate 5-HT2AR expression remain poorly understood. We show that an environmental stimulus, sleep deprivation, upregulates 5-HT2ARs in the mouse frontal cortex (FC) in just 6-8 hours. This induction...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
February 11, 2020
Christopher J. Whyte, Ryan Smith
preprint
The global neuronal workspace (GNW) model has inspired over two decades of hypothesis driven research on the neural basis consciousness. However, recent studies have reported findings that are at odds with empirical predictions of the model. Further, the macro-anatomical focus of current GNW research has limited the specificity of predictions afforded by the model. In this paper we present a...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
February 7, 2020
Kenneth Wengler, Andrew T. Goldberg, George Chahine et al.
6 citations
preprint
Hierarchical perceptual-inference models of psychosis may provide a holistic framework for understanding psychosis in schizophrenia including heterogeneity in clinical presentations. Particularly, hypothesized alterations at distinct levels of the perceptual-inference hierarchy may explain why hallucinations and delusions tend to cluster together yet sometimes manifest in isolation. To test...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
January 29, 2020
Abhilash Dwarakanath, Vishal Kapoor, Joachim Werner et al.
15 citations
preprint
Access of sensory information to consciousness is thought to be mediated through ignition of neural activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Ignition occurs once activity elicited by sensory input crosses a threshold, which has been shown to depend on brain state fluctuations. However, the neural correlates of fluctuations and their interaction with the neural representations of conscious...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
January 28, 2020
Vishal Kapoor, Abhilash Dwarakanath, Shervin Safavi et al.
preprint
Multiple theories attribute to the primate prefrontal cortex a critical role in conscious perception. However, opposing views caution that prefrontal activity could reflect other cognitive variables during paradigms investigating consciousness, such as decision-making, monitoring and motor reports. To resolve this ongoing debate, we recorded from prefrontal ensembles of macaque monkeys during a...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
January 22, 2020
Greer McKendrick, Hannah Garrett, Holly E. Jones et al.
1 citation
preprint
Patients suffering from opioid use disorder often relapse during periods of abstinence, which is posited to be caused by negative affective states that drive motivated behaviors. Here, we explored whether conditioning mice with morphine in a CPP training paradigm evoked anxietylike behavior during morphine abstinence. To do this, mice were conditioned with morphine (10 mg/kg, i.p.) for five...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
October 30, 2019
Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Edna Furman-Haran, Rafael Malach et al.
2 citations
preprint
Understanding the relationship between brain structure, function and self-reports has hardly been addressed until now in meditation research. Here we demonstrate such relationship, using Mindfulness meditation (MM). MM aims to reduce thought-related processes and enhance bodily awareness, thereby reducing identification with thought content and deconstructing maladaptive self-schema. We thus...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
October 25, 2019
Stefan Arnau, Christoph Löffler, Jan Rummel et al.
2 citations
preprint
Mind wandering during ongoing tasks can impede task performance and increase the risk of failure in laboratory as well as in daily-life tasks and work environments. Neurocognitive measures like the electroencephalography (EEG) offer the opportunity to assess mind wandering non-invasively without interfering with the primary task. However, the literature on electrophysiological correlates of...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
October 1, 2019
Tf. Varley, M. Craig, Ram Adapa et al.
preprint
Recent evidence suggests that the quantity and quality of conscious experience may be a function of the complexity of activity in the brain, and that consciousness emerges in a critical zone on the axes of order/randomness and integration/differentiation. We propose fractal shapes as a measure of proximity to this critical point, as fractal dimension encodes information about complexity beyond...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
October 1, 2019
Michelle J. Redinbaugh, Jessica M. Phillips, Niranjan A. Kambi et al.
preprint
Consciousness is the capacity to experience one’s environment and internal states. The minimal mechanisms sufficient to produce this experience, the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC), are thought to involve thalamocortical and intracortical interactions, but the key operations and circuit paths are unclear. We simultaneously recorded neural activity in central thalamus and across layers...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
August 7, 2019
Matthew J Davidson, Irene L Graafsma, Naotsugu Tsuchiya et al.
preprint
Perceptual filling-in (PFI) occurs when a physically-present visual target disappears from conscious perception, with its location filled in by the surrounding visual background. Compared to other visual illusions, these perceptual changes are crisp and simple, and can occur for multiple spatially-separated targets simultaneously. Contrasting neural activity during the presence or absence of...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 29, 2019
Nikita Agarwal, Aditi Kathpalia, Nithin Nagaraj
preprint
Characterizing consciousness, the inner subjective feeling that is present in every experience, is a hard problem in neuroscience, but has important clinical implications. A leading neuro-scientific approach to understanding consciousness is to measure the complex causal neural interactions in the brain. Elucidating the complex causal interplay between cortical neural interactions and the...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 10, 2019
Joel Frohlich, Lynne M. Bird, John Dell’italia et al.
preprint
Numerous theories link consciousness to informationally rich, complex neural dynamics. This idea is challenged by the observation that children with Angelman syndrome (AS), while fully conscious, display a hypersynchronous electroencephalogram (EEG) phenotype typical of information-poor dynamics associated with unconsciousness. If informational complexity theories are correct, then sufficiently...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
May 27, 2019
William Wong, Valdas Noreika, Levente Móró et al.
preprint
The Dream Catcher test defines the criteria for a genuine discovery of the neural constituents of phenomenal consciousness. Passing the test implies that some patterns of purely brain-based data directly correspond to the subjective features of phenomenal experience, which would help to bridge the explanatory gap between consciousness and brain. Here, we conducted the Dream Catcher test for the...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 12, 2019
Valdas Noreika, Jennifer Windt, Markus Kern et al.
preprint
Recently, cortical correlates of specific dream contents have been reported, such as the activation of the sensorimotor cortex during dreamed hand clenching. Yet, the causal mechanisms underlying specific dream content remain largely elusive. Here, we investigated how alterations in the excitability of sensorimotor areas through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) might alter dream...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 10, 2019
Micah Allen, Andrew Levy, Thomas Parr et al.
100 citations
preprint
A growing body of evidence highlights the intricate linkage of exteroceptive perception to the rhythmic activity of the visceral body. In parallel, interoceptive inference theories of emotion and self-consciousness are on the rise in cognitive science. However, thus far no formal theory has emerged to integrate these twin domains; instead most extant work is conceptual in nature. Here, we...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 4, 2019
Bernd Porr, Alex Trew, Alice Miller
1 citation
preprint
The disruption of the serotonergic (5HT) system has been implicated in causing major depression and the standard view is that a lack of serotonin is to blame for the resulting symptoms. Consequently, pharmacological interventions aim to increase serotonin concentration in its target areas or stimulating excitatory 5HT receptors. A standard approach is to use serotonin reuptake inhibitors...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
March 22, 2019
André S. Nilsen, Bjørn E. Juel, Johan F. Storm
preprint
Background Developing and testing methods for reliably assessing states of consciousness in humans is important for both basic research and clinical purposes. Several potential measures, partly grounded in theoretical developments, have been proposed, and some of them seem to reliably distinguish between conscious and unconscious brain states. However, the degrees to which these measures may...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
March 12, 2019
Siouar Bensaid, Julien Modolo, Isabelle Merlet et al.
preprint
Understanding the origin of the main physiological processes involved in consciousness is a major challenge of contemporary neuroscience, with crucial implications for the study of Disorders of Consciousness (DOC). The difficulties in achieving this task include the considerable quantity of experimental data in this field, along with the non-intuitive, nonlinear nature of neuronal dynamics. One...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
January 30, 2019
Makoto Uji, Ines Jentzsch, James Redburn et al.
preprint
The subjective phenomenology associated with stereopsis, of solid tangible objects separated by a palpable negative space, is conventionally thought to be a by-product of the derivation of depth from binocular disparity. However, the same qualitative impression has been reported in the absence of disparity, e.g., when viewing pictorial images monocularly through an aperture. Here we aimed to...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
January 28, 2019
Thomas Pokorny, Patricia Duerler, Erich Seifritz et al.
2 citations
preprint
Psychiatric and neurodegenerative illnesses are characterized by cognitive impairments, in particular deficits in working memory, decision making, and executive functions including cognitive flexibility. However, the neuropharmacology of these cognitive functions is poorly understood. The serotonin (5-HT) 2A receptor might be a promising candidate for the modulation of cognitive processes....
bioRxiv Preprint Server
January 28, 2019
Daniel Kondziella, Markus Harboe Olsen
2 citations
preprint
ABSTRACT Background Near-death experiences have fascinated humans for centuries, but their origin and prevalence remain unknown. Methods Using an online crowdsourcing platform, we recruited 1034 lay people from 35 countries to investigate the prevalence of near-death experiences and self-reported REM sleep intrusion. Reports were validated using the Greyson Near-Death Experiences Scale (GNDES)...