Karishma Chhabria

Is the conscious brain synchronized or noisy? Information-theoretic measures such as transfer entropy and mutual information are used as descriptors of synchrony from neurophysiological data measure in experiments. We propose that information flow is not merely a signature of conscious states but a computational principle actively used by oscillatory networks to gate coupling. To formalise this, we introduce an adaptive coupling rule wherein coupling between kuramoto phase oscillators evolves under an opponent process: reinforced when one oscillator carries genuine predictive signal about another's future state (high transfer entropy), and suppressed when their activity becomes redundant (high mutual information). Analysis of this rule reveals a detuning preference: the system suppresses coupling between frequency-identical oscillators, where redundancy is maximal and predictive signal vanishes, while selectively reinforcing connections across a specific frequency difference range in which partial synchrony generates maximal information exchange. This preference is analogous in form to resonance in a passively driven system where the drive frequency close but not identical to the natural frequency brings is necessary. Our conjecture is that these findings carry direct implications for understanding alterations of consciousness. The collapse of long-range transfer entropy observed under anaesthesia and in disorders of consciousness, preceding and outlasting changes in synchrony itself is consistent with a system losing precisely the informative-but-non-redundant coupling that our adaptive rule sustains. If biological oscillators implement something functionally equivalent, the resulting network would naturally avoid redundant within-frequency entrainment while amplifying cross-frequency coupling. Future work will extend this framework to large-scale heterogeneous oscillator networks, systematically evaluating how networks operating under different detuning regimes; from globally synchronised to broadly heterogeneous, differ in their capacity for information integration. We hypothesise that the detuning range maximises adaptive coupling growth and corresponds to the regime of maximal mutual information. Hence, neither the redundant synchrony of unconscious states nor the high noise, but the critical middle ground that may constitute the dynamical signature of consciousness.