Last week I had the chance to present our work @bottinilab.bsky.social @tobiasstaudigl.bsky.social at #PuG2026. Thanks to @xiongbowu.bsky.social for the invitation and for organizing a fantastic symposium, with @tafgmcb.bsky.social, @baiweiliu.bsky.social, Ziad Hafed. It was a pleasure to take part!
Thalamic oscillations distinguish natural states of consciousness in humans
Our key result is that the thalamic oscillation is present in both wakefulness and REM sleep within the same individuals.
The post above shows scalp EEG during wakefulness only, no REM sleep.
The omitted first half of the sentence—“using a rare opportunity to directly record from the human thalamus…”—already highlights a key difference, among others.
Contrary to claims made here & elsewhere, we do mention Snipes (2025) in our paper, alongside other relevant reports of cortical activity.
For those interested in evaluating the strength of the claims made in some of these posts relative to the data they cite, here is the relevant statement from Snipes (2025):
“...iota was detected in 2 of 17 wake recordings.”
That is, 2 out of 17 participants.
what about iii)
“The analysis used to quantify the prevalence of iota in wake (Fig. 1C) may occasionally count a harmonic of alpha as iota, thus overestimating the prevalence of iota oscillations” (Snipes, 2025).
The figure shown above is full of alpha in wake.
So even fewer than 2 out of 17?
