By decoding flickering brain signals, scientists envision a new way to detect consciousness
By studying signals flickering across the entire brain, scientists have detected a pattern that may help them detect consciousness in patients.
As a child, Enzo Tagliazucchi was terrified of going to sleep. His self seemed so fragile, so easy to lose. He worried that if he let himself drift off, he might wake up as someone else. So he tried to stay alert, to keep moving, tapping his fingers as he lay in bed, taking nocturnal trips through his family’s house in Buenos Aires. But it never worked. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop his eyes from eventually fluttering closed. In the morning, when they opened again, he wondered where he’d been.
Now, as a neuroscientist who studies wakefulness at the Brain and Spine published Wednesday in Science Advances.
