RESEARCH ARTICLE An electrophysiological marker of arousal level in humans Janna D Lendner1,2*, Randolph F Helfrich3,4, Bryce A Mander5, Luis Romundstad6, Jack J Lin7, Matthew P Walker1,8, Pal G Larsson9, Robert T Knight1,8 1Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States; 2Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, University Medical Center Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; 3Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Tuebingen, Germany; 4Department of Neurology and Epileptology, University Medical Center Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; 5Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States; 6Department of Anesthesiology, University of Oslo Medical Center, Oslo, Norway; 7Department of Neurology, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States; 8Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States; 9Department of Neurosurgery, University of Oslo Medical Center, Oslo, Norway Abstract Deep non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) and general anesthesia with propofol are prominent states of reduced arousal linked to the occurrence of synchronized oscillations in the electroencephalogram (EEG). Although rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is also associated with diminished arousal levels, it is characterized by a desynchronized, ‘wake-like’ EEG. This observation implies that reduced arousal states are not necessarily only defined by synchronous oscillatory activity. Using intracranial and surface EEG recordings in four independent data sets, we demonstrate that the 1/f spectral slope of the electrophysiological power spectrum, which reflects the non-oscillatory, scale-free component of neural activity, delineates wakefulness from propofol *For correspondence: anesthesia, NREM and REM sleep. Critically, the spectral slope discriminates wakefulness from
[email protected] REM sleep solely based on the neurophysiological brain state.