Brian H. Silverstein

• PostDoc Position at University of Michigan

Psilocybin produces an altered state of consciousness in humans and is associated with complex spatiotemporal changes in cortical networks. Given the emphasis on rodent models for mechanistic studies, there is a need for characterization of the effect of psilocybin on cortex-wide network dynamics. Previous electroencephalographic studies of psyched...

Psilocybin produces an altered state of consciousness in humans and is associated with complex spatiotemporal changes in brain networks. Given the emphasis on rodent models for mechanistic studies, there is a need for characterization of the effect of psilocybin on brain-wide network dynamics. Previous rodent studies of psychedelics, using electroe...

Background Sleep disruption is a common occurrence during medical care and is detrimental to patient recovery. Long-term sedation in the critical care setting is a modifiable factor that affects sleep, but the impact of different sedative–hypnotics on sleep homeostasis is not clear. Methods We conducted a systematic comparison of the effects of pr...

Background: Cholinergic stimulation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) can reverse anesthesia. Conversely, inactivation of PFC can delay emergence from anesthesia. PFC receives cholinergic projections from basal forebrain, which contains wake-promoting neurons. However, the role of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons in arousal from the anesthetized state...

During a verbal conversation, as individuals listen and respond, the human brain moves through a series of complex linguistic processing stages: decoding of speech sounds, semantic comprehension, retrieval of semantically coherent words, and finally, overt production of speech outputs. Each process is thought to be supported by a cortical network c...

Objective To visualize and validate the dynamics of interhemispheric neural propagations induced by single-pulse electrical stimulation (SPES). Methods This methodological study included three patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy who underwent measurement of cortico-cortical spectral responses (CCSRs) during bilateral stereo-electroencephal...

Objective To visualize and validate the dynamics of interhemispheric neural propagations induced by single-pulse electrical stimulation (SPES). Methods: This methodological study included three patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy who underwent measurement of cortico-cortical spectral responses (CCSRs) during bilateral stereo-electroencephal...

People occasionally use filler phrases or pauses, such as “uh”, “um”, or “y’know,” that interrupt the flow of a sentence and fill silent moments between ordinary (non-filler) phrases. It remains unknown which brain networks are engaged during the utterance of fillers. We addressed this question by quantifying event-related cortical high gamma activ...

Introduction Cortico-cortical evoked potentials (CCEPs) are utilized to identify effective networks in the human brain. Following single-pulse electrical stimulation of cortical electrodes, evoked responses are recorded from distant cortical areas. A negative deflection (N1) which occurs 10–50 ms post-stimulus is considered to be a marker for direc...

Lower- and higher-order visual cortices in the posterior brain, ranging from the medial- and lateral-occipital to fusiform regions, are suggested to support visual object recognition, whereas the frontal eye field (FEF) plays a role in saccadic eye movements which optimize visual processing. Previous studies using electrophysiology and functional M...

Objective To characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of auditory and picture naming-related cortical activation in Japanese-speaking patients. Methods Ten patients were assigned auditory naming and picture naming tasks during extraoperative intracranial EEG recording in a tertiary epilepsy center. Time-frequency analysis determined at what electr...

Abstract Auditory naming is suggested to require verbal working memory (WM) operations in addition to speech sound perception during the sentence listening period and semantic/syntactic processing during the subsequent judgement period. We attempted to dissect cortical activations attributable to verbal WM from those otherwise involved in answering...

Introduction Data from electrical stimulation mapping (ESM) have identified areas critical to language function in the left temporal and frontal lobes, and studies of electrocorticography (ECoG) information flow suggest the areas are functionally connected. Yet, the anatomical pathways, especially between the posterior temporal lobe and both the in...

Introduction: Recent evidence suggests that the conscious brain is characterized by a diverse repertoire of functional connectivity patterns while the anesthetized brain shows stereotyped activity. However, classical time-averaged methods of connectivity dismiss dynamic and temporal characteristics of functional configurations. Here we demonstrate...

Studies from human and non-human species have demonstrated a breakdown of functional corticocortical connectivity during general anesthesia induced by anesthetics with diverse molecular, neurophysiological, and pharmacological profiles. Recent studies have demonstrated that changes in long-range neural communication, and by corollary, functional co...

We read with interest the article by Silverstein and colleagues (Silverstein, Snodgrass, Shevrin and Kushwaha 2015) who questioned the putative specificity of the P3b event-related potentials (ERP) component as a neural signature of conscious access to a visual representation. Prior to this new study, numerous empirical reports revealed that a brai...

Background: Significant advances have been made in our understanding of subcortical processes related to anesthetic- and sleep-induced unconsciousness, but the associated changes in cortical connectivity and cortical neurochemistry have yet to be fully clarified. Methods: Male Sprague-Dawley rats were instrumented for simultaneous measurement of...

Schizophrenia has long been considered one of the most intractable psychiatric conditions. Its etiology is likely polygenic, and its symptoms are hypothesized to result from complex aberrations in network-level neuronal activity. While easily identifiable by psychiatrists based on clear behavioral signs, the biological substrate of the disease rema...

British Journal of Anaesthesia, 2015; 114(6): 979–89, DOI 10.1093/bja/aev095 This article was published by mistake in the June issue of BJA due to an administrative error. It was supposed to go into this special issue on Memory and Awareness in Anaesthesia. The article can be accessed free of charge at the following link: http://bja.oxfordjournals...

There is limited understanding of cortical neurochemistry and cortical connectivity during ketamine anaesthesia. We conducted a systematic study to investigate the effects of ketamine on cortical acetylcholine (ACh) and electroencephalographic coherence. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (n=11) were implanted with electrodes to record electroencephalogram (...