An open fMRI resource for studying human brain function and covert consciousness under anesthesia

Anesthesia has revolutionized surgical practice and offers a controlled model to study the neurobiology of consciousness. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown that anesthesia primarily disrupts connectivity across association cortices, suggesting that impaired integration between higher-order brain regions underlies unconsciousness. However, traditional fMRI paradigms are limited in detecting covert consciousness. Here, we present an fMRI dataset acquired from 26 healthy volunteers performing mental imagery tasks (tennis, navigation, and hand squeeze) and a motor response task under graded propofol sedation. The dataset captures brain activity across varying sedation levels, including instances of volitional mental imagery despite behavioral unresponsiveness. Prior analyses using this dataset have investigated the anterior insula's role in conscious access and asymmetric neural dynamics during loss and recovery of consciousness. This openly available dataset, formatted according to BIDS standards and has been released via OpenNeuro, provides a resource for exploring the neural mechanisms of anesthesia and consciousness with the unique feature of mental imagery, traditionally used only during assessment of disorders of consciousness.