Ce que nous dit la science des expériences de mort imminente

editorial reviewe

Can science explain consciousness? Lessons from coma and related states

Understanding consciousness remains one of the greatest mysteries for science to solve. How do our brains work? How can we know if some patients in coma have any consciousness left and how could we communicate with them? What are near-death experiences? What is brain death? What happens in our brains during dreaming, hypnosis or meditation? At present, nobody understands how matter (our trillions of neural connections) becomes perception and thought. We will here briefly review some neurological facts on consciousness and impaired consciousness. Thanks to recent advances in (neuroimaging) technology, the mapping of conscious perception and cognition in health (e.g., conscious waking, sleep, dreaming, hypnosis, meditation, sleepwalking and anesthesia) and in disease (e.g., coma, near-death, “vegetative” state, seizures, hallucinations etc) is providing exiting new insights into the functional neuroanatomy of human consciousness. Our perception of the outside world (sensory awareness; what we see, hear, etc.) and our awareness of an inner world (self-awareness; the little "voice" inside that "speaks" to ourselves) seemingly depend on two separate networks we could recently identify. Philosophers might argue that the subjective aspect of the mind will never be sufficiently accounted for by the objective methods of reductionistic science. We here prefer a more pragmatic approach and remain naively optimistic that technological advances might ultimately lead to an understanding of the neural substrate of human consciousness

Response to: Near-death experiences and the importance of transparency in subjectivity, ontology and epistemology

editorial reviewe

Unresponsive but not necessarily unconscious: An introduction to the Special Focus

peer reviewe

Tracking dynamic interactions between structural and functional connectivity : a TMS/EEG-dMRI study

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in combination with neuroimaging techniques allows to measure the effects of a direct perturbation of the brain. When coupled with high-density electroencephalography (TMS/hd-EEG), TMS pulses revealed electrophysiological signatures of different cortical modules in health and disease. However, the neural underpinnings of these signatures remain unclear. Here, by applying multimodal analyses of cortical response to TMS recordings and diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) tractography, we investigated the relationship between functional and structural features of different cortical modules in a cohort of awake healthy volunteers. For each subject, we computed directed functional connectivity interactions between cortical areas from the source-reconstructed TMS/hd-EEG recordings and correlated them with the correspondent structural connectivity matrix extracted from dMRI tractography, in three different frequency bands (alpha, beta, gamma) and two sites of stimulation (left precuneus and left premotor). Each stimulated area appeared to mainly respond to TMS by being functionally elicited in specific frequency bands, that is, beta for precuneus and gamma for premotor. We also observed a temporary decrease in the whole-brain correlation between directed functional connectivity and structural connectivity after TMS in all frequency bands. Notably, when focusing on the stimulated areas only, we found that the structure-function correlation significantly increases over time in the premotor area controlateral to TMS. Our study points out the importance of taking into account the major role played by different cortical oscillations when investigating the mechanisms for integration and segregation of information in the human brain

Studying death and near-death experiences requires neuroscientific expertise

peer reviewedParnia et al.1 recently published suggestions for the study of death and experiences recalled in a near-death context. We have serious reservations about the authors’ statements. In this commentary, we discuss the omissions and knowledge gaps inherent to the authors’ paper, which among others include incorrect neurological claims about brain death and misunderstandings regarding the terminology of consciousness. Although we believe that (near-)death research deserves a framework guideline, the paper by Parnia and colleagues is misleading and, contrary to the authors' intention, hinders the scientific understanding of near-death experiences and the neural mechanisms occurring in the dying brain