Modular structure of multilayer temporal functional connectivity networks during loss of consciousness.

DEL POZO, SOFIA MORENA; ENZO TAGLIAZUCCHI; PABLO BALENZUELA

Villa Carlos Paz, Córdoba.

Congreso; SAN 2019; 2019

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

Consciousness can be defined as reflecting subjective experience, or as the sense of being a distinct entity capable of agency, sentience, narrative identity in time. In the transition to unconscious states, these subjective attributes are lost. The study of the neural correlates of this change could shed a light towards understanding consciousness itself. The dynamic core hypothesis proposes that conscious vigil is associated with a distributed network of brain regions that interact temporarily for relatively short time intervals. We investigated the modular structure of multilayer functional connectivity networks measured with fMRI during conscious wakefulness, deep sleep and propofol induced states, and introduced a null model to select the resolution and inter-layer coupling parameters. We applied a community detection algorithm on the multilayer network of temporally evolving functional interactions inferred from fMRI. Both propofol induced unconsciousness and deep sleep decreased the size of the largest dynamic community, which could be attributed to sensory regions coalescing into larger communities, while frontoparietal regions showed the opposite effect. Our results comprise a method for parameter selection in multilayer modularity maximization algorithms and for the characterization of time-evolving functional modules during loss of consciousness.