Repertoire of mesoscopic cortical activity is not reduced during anesthesia.
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ABSTRACT: Consciousness has been linked to the repertoire of brain states at various spatiotemporal scales. Anesthesia is thought to modify consciousness by altering information integration in cortical and thalamocortical circuits. At a mesoscopic scale, neuronal populations in the cortex form synchronized ensembles whose characteristics are presumably state-dependent but this has not been rigorously tested. In this study, spontaneous neuronal activity was recorded with 64-contact microelectrode arrays in primary visual cortex of chronically instrumented, unrestrained rats under stepwise decreasing levels of desflurane anesthesia (8%, 6%, 4%, and 2% inhaled concentrations) and wakefulness (0% concentration). Negative phases of the local field potentials formed compact, spatially contiguous activity patterns (CAPs) that were not due to chance. The number of CAPs was 120% higher in wakefulness and deep anesthesia associated with burst-suppression than at intermediate levels of consciousness. The frequency distribution of CAP sizes followed a power-law with slope -1.5 in relatively deep anesthesia (8-6%) but deviated from that at the lighter levels. Temporal variance and entropy of CAP sizes were lowest in wakefulness (76% and 24% lower at 0% than at 8% desflurane, respectively) but changed little during recovery of consciousness. CAPs categorized by K-means clustering were conserved at all anesthesia levels and wakefulness, although their proportion changed in a state-dependent manner. These observations yield new knowledge about the dynamic landscape of ongoing population activity in sensory cortex at graded levels of anesthesia. The repertoire of population activity and self-organized criticality at the mesoscopic scale do not appear to contribute to anesthetic suppression of consciousness, which may instead depend on large-scale effects, more subtle dynamic properties, or changes outside of primary sensory cortex.
SUBMITTER: Hudetz AG
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5118138 | biostudies-other | 2016 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
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