Frontoparietal cortex is involved in the explicit processing (awareness) of stimuli. Frontoparietal activation has also been found in studies of subliminal stimulus processing. We hypothesized that an impairment of top-down processes, involved in recurrent neuronal message-passing and the generation of long-latency electrophysiological responses, might provide a more reliable correlate of consciousness in severely brain-damaged patients, than frontoparietal responses. We measured effective connectivity during a mismatch negativity paradigm and found that the only significant difference between patients in a vegetative state and controls was an impairment of backward connectivity from frontal to temporal cortices. This result emphasizes the importance of top-down projections in recurrent processing that involve high-order associative cortices for conscious perception.
Preserved feedforward but impaired top-down processes in the vegetative state / M. Boly, M. I. Garrido, O. Gosseries, M. Bruno, P. Boveroux, C. Schnakers, M. Massimini, V. Litvak, S. Laureys, K. Friston. - In: SCIENCE. - ISSN 0036-8075. - 332:6031(2011 May 13), pp. 858-862. [10.1126/science.1202043]
Titolo: | Preserved feedforward but impaired top-down processes in the vegetative state | |
Autori: | ||
Parole Chiave: | persistent vegetative state; young adult; humans; electroencephalography; Bayes Theorem; aged; awareness; models, statistical; parietal lobe; auditory perception; frontal lobe; consciousness; brain mapping; aged, 80 and over; temporal lobe; neural pathways; adult ; evoked potentials, auditory; middle aged; models, neurological; male; female; reaction time | |
Settore Scientifico Disciplinare: | Settore BIO/09 - Fisiologia Settore MED/26 - Neurologia | |
Data di pubblicazione: | 13-mag-2011 | |
Rivista: | ||
Tipologia: | Article (author) | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): | http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1202043 | |
Appare nelle tipologie: | 01 - Articolo su periodico |
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