Statistical diversity distinguishes global states of consciousness
bioRxiv December 7, 2023 Joseph Starkey, Robin L. Carhart-Harris, Andrea Pigorini et al. preprint
A measure of 'statistical complexity' that calculates the diversity of statistical interactions in neural activity, removing randomness, was tested on human brain data from different sleep stages and from people under ketamine, LSD, and psilocybin. Statistical complexity differentiated sleep stages similarly to the standard Lempel-Ziv complexity measure and increased relative to placebo for all three psychedelic substances. The measure is a useful alternative for investigating neural activity complexity across states of consciousness.