Interface Focus
April 14, 2023
Elvira G-Guzmán, Yonatan Sanz Perl, Jakub Vohryzek et al.
34 citations
Living systems must constantly work against equilibrium to survive, a property that can be measured through temporal asymmetry in brain signals. Using statistical physics, researchers analyzed reversibility in functional magnetic resonance imaging data from patients with disorders of consciousness. They found that decreased asymmetry and reduced non-stationarity in brain signals characterize impaired consciousness states, consistent with previous findings in sleep and anesthesia. The work aims to identify biomarkers for patient improvement and classification, and to deepen mechanistic understanding of consciousness disorders.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
October 3, 2025
Marian Martínez-Marín, Jakub Vohryzek, Anira Escrichs et al.
1 citation
preprint
Consciousness levels after coma can be assessed by measuring how far the brain's dynamics are from equilibrium. Using fMRI data and individualized whole-brain models, researchers found that patients with disorders of consciousness—those in a minimally conscious state or unresponsive wakefulness syndrome—show brain activity closer to equilibrium than healthy controls, with the shift increasing as consciousness decreases. Disruptions in hierarchical drive were identified in default-mode network regions and subcortical hubs like the thalamus. Recovery of near-control hierarchy in the visual network distinguished minimally conscious from unresponsive patients, while limbic areas showed similar abnormalities in both groups. Deviation from the fluctuation-dissipation theorem offers a model-based biomarker for clinical stratification.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 7, 2026
Andrea I. Luppi, Dragana Manasova, Justine Y. Hansen et al.
preprint
Functional connectivity in the awake human brain is shaped primarily by cognitive co-activation—the tendency of brain regions to work together during mental tasks—more than by structural or molecular constraints. This predominance is systematically lost across five datasets involving pharmacological and pathological perturbations of consciousness (chronic disorders of consciousness; anesthesia with sevoflurane, propofol, or ketamine), when cognition is disconnected from the environment or abolished. During such states, the predictors of functional architecture shift away from cognitive co-activation and toward anatomical and molecular constraints.