Integrating the science of consciousness and anesthesia.

What about Memory, Consciousness, Recall, and Awareness in Anesthesia?

A New Method for On-Farm Euthanasia with Animal Welfare Considerations

Objective: Euthanasia of animals is a highly stressful situation for veterinarians and may be source of ethical dilemmas; also, it is very difficult to decide “which technique is more appropriate for the given situation”? The aim of this study was to describe a new humane method for on-farm euthanasia. Design: Pilot clinical trial. Animals: thirteen animals including three horses, six sheep ...

Monitoring Depth of Anesthesia by Nonlinear Correlation Measures

Background: Monitoring the depth of anesthesia (DOA) takes an important role for anesthetists in order avoiding undesirable reactions such as intraoperative awareness, prolonged recovery and increased risk of postoperative complications.The Central Nervous System (CNS) is the main target of anesthetic drugs, hence EEG signal processing during anesthesia is helpful for monitoring DOA. In order t...

Consciousness and anesthesia.

When we are anesthetized, we expect consciousness to vanish. But does it always? Although anesthesia undoubtedly induces unresponsiveness and amnesia, the extent to which it causes unconsciousness is harder to establish. For instance, certain anesthetics act on areas of the brain's cortex near the midline and abolish behavioral responsiveness, but not necessarily consciousness. Unconsciousness ...

Integrating consciousness

Cognitive science has largely assumed we can understand the mind without taking consciousness into account. From an evolutionary perspective, this is not a plausible assumption. The sophisticated display of multiple types of information characteristic of consciousness could not have evolved unless these display formats were functionally integrated into the mind's information processing system. ...