Consciousness: a neurosurgical perspective.

Concept cells Consciousness Medial frontal lobe Medial temporal lobe Single-neuron recordings Volition

Journal

Acta neurochirurgica
ISSN: 0942-0940
Titre abrégé: Acta Neurochir (Wien)
Pays: Austria
ID NLM: 0151000

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
10 2023
Historique:
received: 02 12 2022
accepted: 24 07 2023
medline: 23 10 2023
pubmed: 18 8 2023
entrez: 18 8 2023
Statut: ppublish

Résumé

Neurosurgeons are in a unique position to shed light on the neural basis for consciousness, not only by their clinical care of patients with compromised states of consciousness, but also by employing neurostimulation and neuronal recordings through intracranial electrodes in awake surgical patients, as well as during stages of sleep and anethesia. In this review, we discuss several aspects of consciousness, i.e., perception, memory, and willed actions, studied by electrical stimulation and single neuron recordings in the human brain. We demonstrate how specific neuronal activity underlie the emergence of concepts, memories, and intentions in human consciousness. We discuss the representation of specific conscious content by temporal lobe neurons and present the discovery of "concept cells" and the encoding and retrieval of memories by neurons in the medial temporal lobe. We review prefrontal and parietal neuronal activation that precedes conscious intentions to act. Taken together with other studies in the field, these findings suggest that specific conscious experience may arise from stochastic fluctuations of neuronal activity, reaching a dynamic threshold. Advances in brain recording and stimulation technology coupled with the rapid rise in artificial intelligence are likely to increase the amount and analysis capabilities of data obtained from the human brain, thereby improving the decoding of conscious and preconscious states and open new horizons for modulation of human cognitive functions such as memory and volition.

Identifiants

pubmed: 37594639
doi: 10.1007/s00701-023-05738-9
pii: 10.1007/s00701-023-05738-9
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article Review Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Langues

eng

Sous-ensembles de citation

IM

Pagination

2729-2735

Subventions

Organisme : NINDS NIH HHS
ID : U01 NS108930
Pays : United States
Organisme : NINDS NIH HHS
ID : R01 NS084017
Pays : United States
Organisme : NINDS NIH HHS
ID : U01 NS123128
Pays : United States

Informations de copyright

© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature.

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Auteurs

Michal M Andelman-Gur (MM)

Department of Brain Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.

Itzhak Fried (I)

Department of Neurosurgery, David Geffen School of Medicine and Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, 300 Stein Plaza, Ste. 562, Los Angeles, CA, USA. ifried@mednet.ucla.edu.
Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. ifried@mednet.ucla.edu.

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