Thalamic deep brain stimulation paradigm to reduce consciousness: Cortico-striatal dynamics implicated in mechanisms of consciousness
Fig 4
Thalamic DBS triggers periods of behavioral stillness coinciding with low-frequency activity in the EEG, similar to absence epilepsy.
A, Example time course of behavioral and neural signatures of a VPC event initiating after 10Hz stimulation. B,C,D,E, Average behavioral signatures during VPC relative to pre and post conditions (±SE) for the (B) variance in polar eye position from eye tracker, and change in luminance for video data centered on the (C) eyes, (D) mouth, and (E) nose. Luminance changes indicate movement. F, Average EEG power (±SE) for VPC and control stares compared to pre and post conditions. Colored straight lines at top indicate regions of significance for t-tests across frequencies comparing spectra from the different conditions. Vertical black lines indicate the cutoff mark of different frequency bands: δ = (0, 4), θ = (4, 8), α = (8, 15), β = (15, 30), γL = (30, 60), γH = (60, 100). G, Spectrogram of average differences in normalized EEG power (VPC–control stare) aligned to event onset (white line). Frequency is represented across described power bands. Significant cluster outlined in black.