Emergent multiscale organisation of neural dynamics fragments in anaesthesia

Abstract

Abstract Conscious experience depends on the coordinated activity of neural processes that span multiple scales: from synapses to whole-brain dynamics. A recently introduced measure, dynamical independence (DI), identifies, characterises, and quantifies these multi-scale relationships using an information-theoretic dimensionality reduction approach. Here, we use DI to examine changes in the emergent dynamical organisation in the human brain under three pharmacologically distinct anaesthetic interventions (propofol, xenon, ketamine). Applied to source-reconstructed electroencephalography (EEG), our analysis reveals that propofol and xenon, anaesthetics that abolish conscious report, exhibit more emergent but highly variable dynamic structure, indicating fragmented macroscopic dynamical organisation. Ketamine, which preserves dream-like phenomenology, shows a different pattern relative to wakefulness: reduced overall emergence yet a partial preservation of the macroscopic structure. Further exploratory analyses revealed spatially localised source-level contributions to emergent dynamical structure, highlighting regional variations. Together, our results highlight drug-induced reconfigurations of emergent dynamical structure relative to wakefulness, dissociate the amount of emergence from the organisation of emergent dynamics, and caution against equating emergence with level of consciousness. Consequently, we suggest that wakeful conscious processing depends not only on integration between neural components within a single scale, but also on integration across scales, broadening currently held assumptions of putative signatures of consciousness.