Critical dynamics, anesthesia and information integration: Lessons from multi‐scale criticality analysis of voltage imaging data

Abstract

&NA; Critical dynamics are thought to play an important role in neuronal information‐processing: near critical networks exhibit neuronal avalanches, cascades of spatiotemporal activity that are scale‐free, and are considered to enhance information capacity and transfer. However, the exact relationship between criticality, awareness, and information integration remains unclear. To characterize this relationship, we applied multi‐scale avalanche analysis to voltage‐sensitive dye imaging data collected from animals of various species under different anesthetics. We found that anesthesia systematically varied the scaling behavior of neural dynamics, a change that was mirrored in reduced neural complexity. These findings were corroborated by applying the same analyses to a biophysically realistic cortical network model, in which multi‐scale criticality measures were associated with network properties and the capacity for information integration. Our results imply that multi‐scale criticality measures are potential biomarkers for assessing the level of consciousness.