New research has found that the human brain continues to absorb complex information even when we are unconscious.
The Baylor College of Medicine says the brain can perform sophisticated language processing even while under a general anesthesia.
It says the findings, published in the latest edition of Nature, could open new ways of understanding memory, language and brain-computer interfaces.
“Our findings show that the brain is far more active and capable during unconsciousness than previously thought,” researcher Sameer Sheth said.
“Even when patients are fully anesthetised, their brains continue to analyse the world around them.”
The findings were based on patient neural activity during epilepsy surgery.
Using neuropixels probes, the team collected data on how the brain processed sound and language without conscious awareness.
This included playing short stories to patients while recording neural responses.
“Surprisingly, the hippocampus (area of the brain) demonstrated real-time processing of language,” the research report said.
“Neural activity showed the brain’s ability to differentiate parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs and adjectives, based on patterns of neuron firing.”
The study also suggested humans could predict what was coming next in a story while they were unconscious.
This implied that cognitive functions such as language comprehension and prediction do not require consciousness.
“This activity also mirrors the predictive behavior seen in artificial intelligence (AI),” the report said.
“The brain’s ability to predict upcoming words is similar to how large language models generate text.”
Dr Sheth said the findings helped researchers to understand how biological and artificial systems processed information.
“This work pushes us to rethink what it means to be conscious,” he said. “The brain is doing much more behind the scenes than we fully understand.”
The full report can be accessed here
