2026-04-05T12:43:39Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/requestoai:recercat.cat:10230/536252025-12-13T21:27:49Zcom_2072_6col_2072_452952
Perturbations in dynamical models of wholebrain activity dissociate between the level and stability of consciousness
Sanz Perl, Yonatan
Pallavicini, Carla
Pérez Ipiña, Ignacio
Demertz, Athena
Bonhomme, Vincent
Martial, Charlotte
Panda, Rajanikant
Annen, Jitka
Ibañez, Agustin
Kringelbach, Morten L.
Deco, Gustavo
Laufs, Helmut
Sitt, Jacobo
Laureys, Steven
Tagliazucchi, Enzo
Consciousness transiently fades away during deep sleep, more stably under anesthesia,
and sometimes permanently due to brain injury. The development of an index to quantify the
level of consciousness across these different states is regarded as a key problem both in
basic and clinical neuroscience. We argue that this problem is ill-defined since such an
index would not exhaust all the relevant information about a given state of consciousness.
While the level of consciousness can be taken to describe the actual brain state, a complete
characterization should also include its potential behavior against external perturbations.
We developed and analyzed whole-brain computational models to show that the stability of conscious states provides information complementary to their similarity to conscious wakefulness. Our work leads to a novel methodological framework to sort out different brain
states by their stability and reversibility, and illustrates its usefulness to dissociate between
physiological (sleep), pathological (brain-injured patients), and pharmacologically-induced
(anesthesia) loss of consciousness.
S.L. is supported by the University and
University Hospital of Liège, the Belgian National
Funds for Scientific Research (https://www.flagera.
eu/ourfunders/fund-for-scientific-research-fnrs-f-rs-fnrs/, FRS-FNRS), the European Union’s Horizon
2020 Framework Programme for Research and
Innovation under the Specific Grant Agreement No.
945539 (https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/,
Human Brain Project SGA3), the European Space
Agency (ESA, https://www.esa.int/) and the Belgian
Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO, https://
www.belspo.be/belspo/index_en.stm) in the
framework of the PRODEX Programme,
“Fondazione Europea di Ricerca Biomedica”, the
Bial Foundation, the Mind Science Foundation and
the European Commission, the fund Generet, the
King Baudouin Foundation, DOCMA project [EUH2020-MSCA–RISE–778234]. SL is research
director at FRS-FNRS. AI is partially supported by
grants from CONICET; ANID/FONDECYT Regular
(1210195 and 1210176); FONCYT-PICT 2017-
1820; ANID/FONDAP/15150012 [https://www.anid.
cl/]; Takeda CW2680521 [https://www.takeda.com/
es-es/]; Sistema General de Regalı´as
(BPIN2018000100059), Universidad del Valle (CI
5316) [https://www.univalle.edu.co/]; Alzheimer’s
Association GBHI ALZ UK-20-639295 [https://
www.alz.org/global/overview.asp]; and the MULTIPARTNER CONSORTIUM TO EXPAND DEMENTIA
RESEARCH IN LATIN AMERICA [ReDLat,
supported by National Institutes of Health, National
Institutes of Aging (R01 AG057234), Alzheimer’s
Association (SG-20-725707), Rainwater Charitable
foundation - Tau Consortium, and Global Brain
Health Institute), https://www.gbhi.org/projects/
multi-partner-consortium-expand-dementiaresearch-latin-america-redlat]. The contents of this
publication are solely the responsibility of the
authors and do not represent the official views of
these Institutions. G.D. is supported by a Spanish
national research project (ref. PID2019-105772GBI00 MCIU AE, https://www.csic.es/en/csic I) funded
by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and
Universities (MCIU, https://www.ciencia.gob.es/
portal/site/MICINN?lang_choosen=en), State
Research Agency (AEI); HBP SGA3 Human Brain
Project Specific Grant Agreement 3 (grant
agreement no. 945539, https://www.
humanbrainproject.eu/en), funded by the EU
H2020 FET Flagship programme; SGR Research
Support Group support (ref. 2017 SGR 1545),
funded by the Catalan Agency for Management of
University and Research Grants (AGAUR, https:/ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/regionalinnovation-monitor/organisation/agaur-agencymanagement-university-and-research-grants);
Neurotwin Digital twins for model-driven noninvasive electrical brain stimulation (grant
agreement ID: 101017716) funded by the EU
H2020 FET Proactive programme; euSNN
European School of Network Neuroscience (grant
agreement ID: 860563, http://www.eusnn.eu/)
funded by the EU H2020 MSCA-ITN Innovative
Training Networks; CECH The Emerging Human
Brain Cluster (Id. 001-P-001682) within the
framework of the European Research Development
Fund Operational Program of Catalonia 2014-2020;
Brain-Connects: Brain Connectivity during Stroke
Recovery and Rehabilitation (id. 201725.33)
funded by the Fundacio La Marato TV3 (https://
www.ccma.cat/tv3/marato/fundacio/); Corticity,
FLAG–ERA JTC 2017, (ref. PCI2018-092891)
funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science,
Innovation and Universities (MCIU, https://www.
ciencia.gob.es/portal/site/MICINN?lang_choosen=
en), State Research Agency (AEI). ET is supported
by funding from Agencia Nacional De Promocion
Cientifica Y Tecnologica (Argentina, https://www.
argentina.gob.ar/ciencia/agencia), grant PICT2018-03103 and by a Mercator Fellowship (https://
www.stiftung-mercator.de/en/tenders/mercatorfellowship-program/) awarded by the DFG. The
funders had no role in study design, data collection
and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of
the manuscript.
2022-06-29T06:06:50Z
2022-06-29T06:06:50Z
2021
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info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/945539
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/PID2019-105772GBI00
© 2021 Sanz Perl et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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