Reorganisation of Brain Hubs across Altered States of Consciousness
Scientific Reports February 25, 2020 D. Vatansever, Manuel S. Schröter, R. Adapa et al.
Patterns of functional interactions across distributed brain regions are thought to provide a scaffold for conscious processing, with topological changes seen in loss of consciousness. Using resting-state fMRI in healthy participants at baseline and two levels of propofol-induced sedation, the study found a persistent modular brain architecture but significant reorganization of brain hubs that formed parts of a wider rich-club collective. Reduced strength of rich-club connectivity was significantly associated with poorer performance on a semantic judgment task, highlighting the importance of this higher-order topological feature for conscious cognition.