Recovery of consciousness after brain injury: a mesocircuit hypothesis

By Nicholas D. Schiff. Trends in Neurosciences, 2009

615 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recovery of consciousness following severe brain injuries may occur over long time intervals. Importantly, evolving cognitive recovery can be strongly dissociated from motor recovery in some individuals, resulting in underestimation of cognitive capacities. Common mechanisms of cerebral dysfunction that arise at the neuronal population level may explain slow functional recoveries from severe brain injuries. This review proposes a “mesocircuit” model that predicts specific roles for different structural and dynamic changes that may occur gradually during recovery. Recent functional neuroimaging studies that operationally identify varying levels of awareness, memory and other higher brain functions in patients with no behavioral evidence of these cognitive capacities are discussed. Measuring evolving changes in underlying brain function and dynamics post-injury and post-treatment frames future investigative work.

Subfields: Emergency Medicine, Epidemiology, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/313bfd7d86a8c3a17a6d88fe84f8d3af253cd463

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Citations in the corpus

Insects have the capacity for subjective experience (2016, background): “We conclude with reflections on the relationship between our structural arguments and the so-called “hard problem of consciousness” (Chalmers, 1996).”
Recovery of cortical effective connectivity and recovery of consciousness in vegetative patients (2012, positive): “At the end of the experiment, the stimulation coordinates were recorded and the electrodes positions were digitized.”
Distinct Spectral Profiles of Awake Resting EEG in Disorders of Consciousness: The Role of Frequency and Topography of Oscillations (2022, background): “…damage (Braakman et al. 1988; Levin et al. 1991; Levy et al. 1981; Sazbon et al. 1993; Sazbon and Groswasser 1990; Bates 1991; Shewmon and De Giorgio 1989), it was shown to have some impact on the neurocognitive state (Forgacs et al. 2020; Mecarelli et al. 2019; Forgacs et al. 2020; Schiff 2010).”