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Integrated information structure collapses with anesthetic loss of conscious arousal in Drosophila melanogaster
The physical basis of consciousness remains one of the most elusive concepts in current science. One influential conjecture is that consciousness is to do with some form of causality, measurable through information. The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) proposes that conscious exp...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946294/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33635858 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008722 |
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author | Leung, Angus Cohen, Dror van Swinderen, Bruno Tsuchiya, Naotsugu |
author_facet | Leung, Angus Cohen, Dror van Swinderen, Bruno Tsuchiya, Naotsugu |
author_sort | Leung, Angus |
collection | PubMed |
description | The physical basis of consciousness remains one of the most elusive concepts in current science. One influential conjecture is that consciousness is to do with some form of causality, measurable through information. The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) proposes that conscious experience, filled with rich and specific content, corresponds directly to a hierarchically organised, irreducible pattern of causal interactions; i.e. an integrated informational structure among elements of a system. Here, we tested this conjecture in a simple biological system (fruit flies), estimating the information structure of the system during wakefulness and general anesthesia. Consistent with this conjecture, we found that integrated interactions among populations of neurons during wakefulness collapsed to isolated clusters of interactions during anesthesia. We used classification analysis to quantify the accuracy of discrimination between wakeful and anesthetised states, and found that informational structures inferred conscious states with greater accuracy than a scalar summary of the structure, a measure which is generally championed as the main measure of IIT. In stark contrast to a view which assumes feedforward architecture for insect brains, especially fly visual systems, we found rich information structures, which cannot arise from purely feedforward systems, occurred across the fly brain. Further, these information structures collapsed uniformly across the brain during anesthesia. Our results speak to the potential utility of the novel concept of an “informational structure” as a measure for level of consciousness, above and beyond simple scalar values. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7946294 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-79462942021-03-19 Integrated information structure collapses with anesthetic loss of conscious arousal in Drosophila melanogaster Leung, Angus Cohen, Dror van Swinderen, Bruno Tsuchiya, Naotsugu PLoS Comput Biol Research Article The physical basis of consciousness remains one of the most elusive concepts in current science. One influential conjecture is that consciousness is to do with some form of causality, measurable through information. The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) proposes that conscious experience, filled with rich and specific content, corresponds directly to a hierarchically organised, irreducible pattern of causal interactions; i.e. an integrated informational structure among elements of a system. Here, we tested this conjecture in a simple biological system (fruit flies), estimating the information structure of the system during wakefulness and general anesthesia. Consistent with this conjecture, we found that integrated interactions among populations of neurons during wakefulness collapsed to isolated clusters of interactions during anesthesia. We used classification analysis to quantify the accuracy of discrimination between wakeful and anesthetised states, and found that informational structures inferred conscious states with greater accuracy than a scalar summary of the structure, a measure which is generally championed as the main measure of IIT. In stark contrast to a view which assumes feedforward architecture for insect brains, especially fly visual systems, we found rich information structures, which cannot arise from purely feedforward systems, occurred across the fly brain. Further, these information structures collapsed uniformly across the brain during anesthesia. Our results speak to the potential utility of the novel concept of an “informational structure” as a measure for level of consciousness, above and beyond simple scalar values. Public Library of Science 2021-02-26 /pmc/articles/PMC7946294/ /pubmed/33635858 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008722 Text en © 2021 Leung et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Leung, Angus Cohen, Dror van Swinderen, Bruno Tsuchiya, Naotsugu Integrated information structure collapses with anesthetic loss of conscious arousal in Drosophila melanogaster |
title | Integrated information structure collapses with anesthetic loss of conscious arousal in Drosophila melanogaster |
title_full | Integrated information structure collapses with anesthetic loss of conscious arousal in Drosophila melanogaster |
title_fullStr | Integrated information structure collapses with anesthetic loss of conscious arousal in Drosophila melanogaster |
title_full_unstemmed | Integrated information structure collapses with anesthetic loss of conscious arousal in Drosophila melanogaster |
title_short | Integrated information structure collapses with anesthetic loss of conscious arousal in Drosophila melanogaster |
title_sort | integrated information structure collapses with anesthetic loss of conscious arousal in drosophila melanogaster |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7946294/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33635858 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008722 |
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