Spatial spectral narrowing in the corticothalamic neural field model across consciousness states.

Abstract

The neural correlates of consciousness have been characterized primarily through temporal EEG features, while the spatial dynamics of cortical activity across consciousness states remain poorly understood. Here, we analyze the spatial mode structure of the Robinson corticothalamic neural field model (CTM) across five consciousness states: healthy wakefulness, emergence from minimally conscious state (eMCS), minimally conscious state (MCS), deep sleep (N3), and unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS). We compute the noise-amplified spatial spectrum, which quantifies how the CTM filters spatiotemporal noise across spatial wavenumbers. We find systematic spectral narrowing with decreasing consciousness: the spectral centroid decreases by 48% from healthy wakefulness to UWS, and the finite-wavenumber power fraction tracks the consciousness axis closely. A complementary dispersion analysis confirms that no classical Turing instability occurs in the CTM for any consciousness state. Two-dimensional stochastic simulations show that healthy cortex develops rich multi-scale spatial heterogeneity, while UWS exhibits markedly reduced spatial variation. These results provide a new spatial perspective on the CTM's representation of consciousness states and generate testable predictions for high-density EEG spatial spectral analysis.