A study of the brains of awake and unresponsive people confirms an existing idea about consciousness—that it balances self–awareness with awareness of one’s surroundings, and that this is represented in the brain by the alternating activation of two neural networks. The findings, which were published yesterday (March 11) in Science Advances, also show that these networks are but two of a larger set and that the conscious brain cycles through this set, activating each network independently, in a preferred pattern. In the brains of unresponsive individuals, the two awareness networks are activated far less often than the others.
“This is an interesting article showing that the push-pull relationship between two major human brain networks is disrupted in states of reduced consciousness,” Michael Fox , a neurologist at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study, writes in an email to The Scientist. “This held true across different types ...
