Consciousness and cognition
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Visual, somatosensory, and perspectival cues normally provide congruent information about where the self is experienced. Separating those cues by virtual reality techniques, recent studies found that self-location was systematically biased to where a visual-tactile event was seen. Here we developed a novel, repeatable and implicit measure of self-location to compare and extend previous protocols. ⋯ The results confirm that the self is located to where touch is seen. This leads to either predictable lowering or elevation of self-localization, and the latter was accompanied by sensations of floating, as during out-of-body experiences. Using a novel measurement we show that the unitary and localized character of the self can be experimentally separated from both the origin of the visual perspective and the location of the seen body, which is compatible with clinical data.
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The cognitive unbinding paradigm suggests that the synthesis of neural information is attenuated by general anesthesia. Here, we analyzed the functional organization of brain activities in the conscious and anesthetized states, based on functional segregation and integration. Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings were obtained from 14 subjects undergoing induction of general anesthesia with propofol. ⋯ Furthermore, we demonstrate that loss of consciousness is reflected by the breakdown of the spatiotemporal organization of gamma waves. We conclude that induction of general anesthesia with propofol reduces the capacity for information integration in the brain. These data directly support the information integration theory of consciousness and the cognitive unbinding paradigm of general anesthesia.