Olivia Gosseries

TL;DR: An electroencephalographic-derived index of human consciousness that reflects the information content of the brain’s response to a magnetic stimulus is defined, and appears to be a robust measure that distinguishes conscious from unconscious states well enough to be used on an individual basis, a prerequisite for deployment in the clinic.

TL;DR: It is 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, which emphasizes the importance of top-down projections in recurrent processing that involve high-order associative cortices for conscious perception.

TL;DR: Measurements of effective connectivity by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation combined with electroencephalography can be performed at the bedside while by-passing subcortical afferent and efferent pathways, and without requiring active participation of subjects or language comprehension; hence, they offer an effective way to detect and track recovery of consciousness in brain-injured patients who are unable to exchange information with the external environment.

TL;DR: Cerebral PET could be used to complement bedside examinations and predict long-term recovery of patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome and active fMRI might also be useful for differential diagnosis, but seems to be less accurate.

TL;DR: Contrary to the long-standing view that working memory depends on sustained, elevated activity, evidence is presented suggesting that humans can hold information in working memory via “activity-silent” synaptic mechanisms and the results support a synaptic theory of working memory.