López-González, Ane, 1993-Panda, RajanikantPonce-Alvarez, AdriánZamora-López, GorkaEscrichs, AniraMartial, CharlotteThibaut, AuroreGosseries, OliviaKringelbach, Morten L.Annen, JitkaLaureys, StevenDeco, Gustavo2022-07-042022-07-042021López-González A, Panda R, Ponce-Alvarez A, Zamora-López G, Escrichs A, Martial C, Thibaut A, Gosseries O, Kringelbach ML, Annen J, Laureys S, Deco G. Loss of consciousness reduces the stability of brain hubs and the heterogeneity of brain dynamics. Commun Biol. 2021;4:1037. DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-02537-92399-3642http://hdl.handle.net/10230/53658Low-level states of consciousness are characterized by disruptions of brain activity that sustain arousal and awareness. Yet, how structural, dynamical, local and network brain properties interplay in the different levels of consciousness is unknown. Here, we study fMRI brain dynamics from patients that suffered brain injuries leading to a disorder of consciousness and from healthy subjects undergoing propofol-induced sedation. We show that pathological and pharmacological low-level states of consciousness display less recurrent, less connected and more segregated synchronization patterns than conscious state. We use whole-brain models built upon healthy and injured structural connectivity to interpret these dynamical effects. We found that low-level states of consciousness were associated with reduced network interactions, together with more homogeneous and more structurally constrained local dynamics. Notably, these changes lead the structural hub regions to lose their stability during low-level states of consciousness, thus attenuating the differences between hubs and non-hubs brain dynamics.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2021 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-02537-9ConsciousnessDynamical systemsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess