Complexity of Multi-Dimensional Spontaneous EEG Decreases during Propofol Induced General Anaesthesia

Emerging neural theories of consciousness suggest a correlation between a specific type of neural dynamical complexity and the level of consciousness: When awake and aware, causal interactions between brain regions are both integrated (all regions are to a certain extent connected) and differentiate...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-08, Vol.10 (8), p.e0133532-e0133532
Main Authors: Schartner, Michael, Seth, Anil, Noirhomme, Quentin, Boly, Melanie, Bruno, Marie-Aurelie, Laureys, Steven, Barrett, Adam
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anesthesia
Anesthesia, General
Area Under Curve
Brain
Cerebral Cortex
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Channels
Coma
Complexity
Compressibility
Computer Simulation
Consciousness
Constitution
EEG
Electrodes
Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography - methods
Entropy
Flavors
Humans
Informatics
Inhomogeneity
Lempel Ziv complexity
Magnetic fields
Models, Theoretical
Neurosciences & behavior
Neurosciences & comportement
Propofol
Propofol - pharmacology
ROC Curve
Science
Sciences sociales & comportementales, psychologie
Sleep
Social & behavioral sciences, psychology
Time Factors
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
Unconsciousness
Variability
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Summary:Emerging neural theories of consciousness suggest a correlation between a specific type of neural dynamical complexity and the level of consciousness: When awake and aware, causal interactions between brain regions are both integrated (all regions are to a certain extent connected) and differentiated (there is inhomogeneity and variety in the interactions). In support of this, recent work by Casali et al (2013) has shown that Lempel-Ziv complexity correlates strongly with conscious level, when computed on the EEG response to transcranial magnetic stimulation. Here we investigated complexity of spontaneous high-density EEG data during propofol-induced general anaesthesia. We consider three distinct measures: (i) Lempel-Ziv complexity, which is derived from how compressible the data are; (ii) amplitude coalition entropy, which measures the variability in the constitution of the set of active channels; and (iii) the novel synchrony coalition entropy (SCE), which measures the variability in the constitution of the set of synchronous channels. After some simulations on Kuramoto oscillator models which demonstrate that these measures capture distinct 'flavours' of complexity, we show that there is a robustly measurable decrease in the complexity of spontaneous EEG during general anaesthesia.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0133532