Uncovering the neural mechanisms that allow conscious access to information is a major challenge of neuroscience. An incomplete list of still open questions include, What are the necessary brain computational properties to permit access to a stream of conscious contents? What is the relationship between conscious perception, self-awareness and multisensory processing of bodily signals? How these processes change when the brain transitions to an ‘unconscious’ state (like sleep, anaesthesia or pathological conditions)? Can we externally trigger state-of-consciousness (SOC) transitions by means of stimulation? In this presentation I will present my work focus in these relevant scientific and clinical questions.
I will present our latest developments including different pre-clinical and clinical experimental models (brain-injuries and/or anesthesia), neuroimaging methods (EEG, fMRI or brain/body interactions) and stimulation techniques (tES, auditory/somatosensory/visual stimulation).
Overall I will try to demonstrate that the integration of multimodal neural information provides critical information to characterise the state-of-consciousness in physiological and pathological conditions and might help to predict novel optimal therapeutic strategies.
