ArticlePLoS computational biology2020
Differential effects of propofol and ketamine on critical brain dynamics.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Is criticality a unified setpoint of brain function?Neuron · 2025Pooled it
- Cellular and Microcircuit Mechanisms of Anesthetic Disruption of Conscious-State Organization.Cells · 2026Review
- Emergent multiscale organisation of neural dynamics fragments in anaesthesia.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- From chemistry to cognition: the adaptive origins of consciousness under constraint.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- A Brainstem-Thalamic-Cortex Glutamatergic Neuron Pathway Modulates Propofol Anesthesia.Drug design, development and therapy · 2026Article
- Neurogenic organ dysfunction syndrome after acute brain injury.Military Medical Research · 2025Review
- The Administration of Ketamine Is Associated with Dose-Dependent Stabilization of Cortical Dynamics in Humans.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Towards an expanded neurocognitive account of ketamine's rapid antidepressant effects.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Review
- Meditation induces shifts in neural oscillations, brain complexity, and critical dynamics: novel insights from MEG.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- Article
- Existence of multiple transitions of the critical state due to anesthetics.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Critical dynamics in spontaneous EEG predict anesthetic-induced loss of consciousness and perturbational complexity.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Anesthesia and the neurobiology of consciousness.Neuron · 2024Review
- Criticality of resting-state EEG predicts perturbational complexity and level of consciousness during anesthesia.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Partial entropy decomposition reveals higher-order information structures in human brain activity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Time-resolved correlation of distributed brain activity tracks E-I balance and accounts for diverse scale-free phenomena.Cell reports · 2023Article
- Multivariate information theory uncovers synergistic subsystems of the human cerebral cortex.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Article
- A scoping review for building a criticality-based conceptual framework of altered states of consciousness.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2023Article
- The Montreal model: an integrative biomedical-psychedelic approach to ketamine for severe treatment-resistant depression.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Whether the brain operates at a critical "tipping" point is a long standing scientific question, with evidence from both cellular and systems-scale studies suggesting that the brain does sit in, or near, a critical regime. Neuroimaging studies of humans in altered states of consciousness have prompted the suggestion that maintenance of critical dynamics is necessary for the emergence of consciousness and complex cognition, and that reduced or disorganized consciousness may be associated with deviations from criticality. Unfortunately, many of the cellular-level studies reporting signs of criticality were performed in non-conscious systems (in vitro neuronal cultures) or unconscious animals (e.g. anaesthetized rats). Here we attempted to address this knowledge gap by exploring critical brain dynamics in invasive ECoG recordings from multiple sessions with a single macaque as the animal transitioned from consciousness to unconsciousness under different anaesthetics (ketamine and propofol). We use a previously-validated test of criticality: avalanche dynamics to assess the differences in brain dynamics between normal consciousness and both drug-states. Propofol and ketamine were selected due to their differential effects on consciousness (ketamine, but not propofol, is known to induce an unusual state known as "dissociative anaesthesia"). Our analyses indicate that propofol dramatically restricted the size and duration of avalanches, while ketamine allowed for more awake-like dynamics to persist. In addition, propofol, but not ketamine, triggered a large reduction in the complexity of brain dynamics. All states, however, showed some signs of persistent criticality when testing for exponent relations and universal shape-collapse. Further, maintenance of critical brain dynamics may be important for regulation and control of conscious awareness.
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Registered trials
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