Why Tononi is wrong
In a recent NY Times article, Tononi chooses to propose a rather sketchily-described “Shannon informational” model to supplant a gamma synchrony model partly on these grounds;
“Dr. Tononi sees serious problems in these models. When people lose consciousness from epileptic seizures, for instance, their brain waves become more synchronized. If synchronization were the key to consciousness, you would expect the seizures to make people hyperconscious instead of unconscious, he said. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/science/21consciousness.html?_r=1
Jouny et al (2010) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19910249 surely should have suggested that this is premature closure, with an INCREASE in signal complexity – that is, decline in synchrony – associated with seizure
Our study of ECOG data (electrodes directly attached to the cortex, not on the scalp) confirms this. Sleep signal is least complex/disordered under PCA, first component explains 97%, awake is next, with 93% explained by the first component, while seizure has just 63% explained by first component.
Sean O Nuallain PhD
Tags: tononi consciousness
September 27th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Hi,
You mentioned your study of ECOG data. Could you please give a reference of the paper as I haven’t been able to find it.
Also, there are several studies using different complexity measurements that provide significantly different results; do you have any opinion about this apparent incongruence?
Thank you very much!
All the best,
JeanRémi KING
October 16th, 2010 at 6:46 am
“Jouny et al (2010) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19910249 surely should have suggested that this is premature closure, with an INCREASE in signal complexity – that is, decline in synchrony – associated with seizure”
So what’s wrong with Tononi theory then?
Seizures are not always make someone unconscious, and sometimes even accompanied by hallucinations – in such cases, increase in complexity should be expected (accordingly to the Tononi theory) and this paper provides additional evidence in support of the theory :p
October 29th, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Thanks for your comments
I just published a paper in Biosemiotics that I think answers your question
It’s at
http://www.springerlink.com/content/x10063878485504n/
Warmly,
Sean