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Consciousness & Brain Functional Complexity in Propofol Anaesthesia.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Luppi, Andrea I 
Naci, Lorina 

Abstract

The brain is possibly the most complex system known to mankind, and its complexity has been called upon to explain the emergence of consciousness. However, complexity has been defined in many ways by multiple different fields: here, we investigate measures of algorithmic and process complexity in both the temporal and topological domains, testing them on functional MRI BOLD signal data obtained from individuals undergoing various levels of sedation with the anaesthetic agent propofol, replicating our results in two separate datasets. We demonstrate that the various measures are differently able to discriminate between levels of sedation, with temporal measures showing higher sensitivity. Further, we show that all measures are strongly related to a single underlying construct explaining most of the variance, as assessed by Principal Component Analysis, which we interpret as a measure of "overall complexity" of our data. This overall complexity was also able to discriminate between levels of sedation and serum concentrations of propofol, supporting the hypothesis that consciousness is related to complexity - independent of how the latter is measured.

Description

Keywords

Anesthesia, Anesthetics, Intravenous, Brain, Consciousness, Deep Sedation, Electroencephalography, Humans, Hypnotics and Sedatives, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Propofol

Journal Title

Sci Rep

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2045-2322
2045-2322

Volume Title

10

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (083660/Z/07/Z)