Functional Brain Dynamics Across Development and Altered States of Consciousness

The brain is a dynamic system characterized by continuously evolving neural activity interacting across networks. Temporal synchronization between networks reveals time-varying features, including rapid reconfigurations into transient whole-brain states and spatiotemporal propagations over time. These dynamic patterns, observed across species, reflect ongoing cognition and arousal, enabling the brain’s adaptation to internal and external environments. In this talk, we introduce how these functional dynamics develop in humans and adapt under anesthesia in nonhuman primates (NHPs). In humans, spatiotemporal propagations along sensory-association, task-positive-to-default, and somatomotor-visual axes exhibit age-dependent changes. The sensory-association and task-positive-to-default propagations grow in prominence with age, supporting cognitive maturity. Notably, top-down propagations along the sensory-association axis strongly predict cognitive performance, reflecting the emergence of adult-like dynamic configurations. In NHPs, anesthesia alters functional dynamics by modulating coactivation patterns and their occurrence rate. Increasing isoflurane concentrations shift temporal properties such as duration and transitions between dynamic states while preserving certain spatial patterns. Together, this work highlights the evolution of functional dynamics across development and their adaptation under altered states, offering insights into the mechanisms underlying cognition and the potential for cross-species translational neuroscience.