Consciousness articles from across Nature Portfolio

This fMRI study unveils how specific amygdala subregions and associated brain circuits undergo structural changes over time, highlighting the intricacies of brain plasticity and its link to cognitive and emotional processes.

Bueichekú et al. use multimodal in vivo neuroimaging to investigate the brain characteristics of individuals presenting unawareness of memory loss who are at risk of Alzheimer’s disease due to age. They find unawareness of memory decline is an early behavioral sign that a person might develop Alzheimer’s disease.

The brain’s role in supporting consciousness is unclear. Here, authors show that global markers of consciousness in macaque cortex are suppressed by many anaesthetics, and restored by local stimulation of a thalamic nucleus that also induces awakening.

The combination of general anaesthesia and neuroimaging holds unique potential for catalysing integrative and translational discovery about human brains and consciousness. By spanning molecular, cognitive and clinical neuroscience, anaesthesia provides a bridge from molecules to mind across species.

Sleep is typically considered as a state of behavioral disconnection from the outside world. Recordings of brain activity and facial muscle tone during sleep reveal that humans can respond to external stimuli across most sleep stages. These windows of behavioral responsiveness reveal transient episodes of high-cognitive states with electrophysiological signatures suggestive of a conscious state.

Ketamine-induced dissociated states in mice result from the suppression and activation of cortical pyramidal neuron populations that are active and silent during wakefulness, respectively.

In this Journal Club, Shanice Janssens describes a study with a clever design that dissociates attention and awareness.

Electrical stimulation of the human cortex, undertaken for brain surgery, triggers percepts and feelings. A new study documents an ordering principle to these effects: the farther removed from sensory input or motor output structures, the less likely it is that a region contributes to consciousness.