The complexity of the stream of consciousness.
Creators: name: Coppola, Peter
name: Allanson, Judith
name: Naci, Lorina
name: Adapa, Ram
name: Finoia, Paola
name: Williams, Guy B
name: Pickard, John D
name: Owen, Adrian M
name: Menon, David K
name: Stamatakis, Emmanuel A
Publisher: name: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
Year: 2022
Subjects: Article
/631/378/116/2393
/631/378/116/1925
/59/57
/59/36
article

description: Funder: Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (L'Institut Canadien de Recherches Avancées); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/100007631
description: Funder: DH | National Institute for Health Research (NIHR); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000272
description: Funder: Evelyn Trust; doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004282
description: Funder: Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and NIHR Senior Investigator Awards The British Oxygen Professorship of the Royal College of Anaesthetists the East of England Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care fellowship The L’Oreal-Unesco for Women in Science Excellence Research Fellowship The Stephen Erskine Fellowship, Queens’ College Cambridge Trust NIHR Brain Injury Healthcare Technology Co-operative based at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and University of Cambridge Computing infrastructure at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre
description: Typical consciousness can be defined as an individual-specific stream of experiences. Modern consciousness research on dynamic functional connectivity uses clustering techniques to create common bases on which to compare different individuals. We propose an alternative approach by combining modern theories of consciousness and insights arising from phenomenology and dynamical systems theory. This approach enables a representation of an individual's connectivity dynamics in an intrinsically-defined, individual-specific landscape. Given the wealth of evidence relating functional connectivity to experiential states, we assume this landscape is a proxy measure of an individual's stream of consciousness. By investigating the properties of this landscape in individuals in different states of consciousness, we show that consciousness is associated with short term transitions that are less predictable, quicker, but, on average, more constant. We also show that temporally-specific connectivity states are less easily describable by network patterns that are distant in time, suggesting a richer space of possible states. We show that the cortex, cerebellum and subcortex all display consciousness-relevant dynamics and discuss the implication of our results in forming a point of contact between dynamical systems interpretations and phenomenology.
description: The James S. McDonnell Foundation The Canada Excellence Research Chairs program The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research The British Oxygen Professorship of the Royal College of Anaesthetists The Evelyn Trust, Cambridge and the EoE CLAHRC The L’Oreal-Unesco for Women in Science Excellence Research Fellowship The Stephen Erskine Fellowship, Queens’ College, University of Cambridge Computing infrastructure at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre (WBIC-HPHI) the NIHR Brain Injury Healthcare Technology Co-operative based at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Cambridge Trust