Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are devices offering alternative means of communication when conventional means are permanently, or nonpermanently, impaired. The latter is commonly induced in general anesthesia and is necessary for the conduction of the surgery. However, in some cases it is possible that the patient regains consciousness during surgery, but cannot directly communicate this to ...

Chest compression is important in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. However, life support algorithms do not specify when chest compression should be initiated in patients with persistent spontaneous normal breathing in the early phase after cardiac arrest. Here we describe the case of a 69-year-old man who underwent femoral bypass surgery and was extubated at the end of the procedure. After extuba...

While ubiquitous, pharmacological manipulation of consciousness remains poorly defined and incompletely understood (Prys-Roberts, 1987). This retards anesthetic drug development, confounds interpretation of animal studies conducted under anesthesia, and limits the sensitivity of clinical monitors of cerebral function to intact perception. Animal and human studies propose a functional "switch" a...

Anaesthesia awareness (AA) is postoperative recall of events experienced under general anaesthesia. Most frequently patients remember an auditory perception, the feeling of motor function lost, pain, helplessness, anxiety, panic, impending death. The prevalence of awareness in nonobstetric and noncardiac surgical cases is 0.1%-0.2%. The prevalence is higher in cardiac surgery, obstetric and maj...

BACKGROUND Studies on the effects of anaesthesia on event-related potentials and long latency auditory-evoked potentials (AEP) are sparse. Both provide information on cortical processing and may have potential as monitors of awareness. We studied the effect of propofol on the event-related potential mismatch negativity (MMN) and the long-latency AEP NI. METHODS Twenty-one patients received 1 ...

The 9th International Symposium on Memory and Awareness in Anesthesia (MAA9) was held in Tokyo, Japan on June 20–23, 2014, attracting over 70 delegates fromaround theworld. It was chaired by Jiro Kurata, from the TokyoMedical andDental University, and was jointly sponsored by the British Journal of Anaesthesia to support research activities in the fields of awareness during anaesthesia, neurobi...