BACKGROUND Appropriate patient selection is very important when initiating mild therapeutic hypothermia (MTH) for patients following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and the extent of unconsciousness at implementation must be defined in such cases. However, there are no clear standards regarding the level of unconsciousness at which MTH would be beneficial. The effects of MTH in patients with di...

It is recognized that antibiotics which contain fl-lactam; penicillins, cephalosporines and carbapenems (imipenem/cilastatin, panipenem/betamipron and meropenem etc.) cause seizures as adverse effects1)•`5). The presence of the open /3-lacam metabolite was reported to inhibit the binding of the inhibitory neurotransmitter, gamma aminobutyric acid, to its receptor in the central nervous system (...

In the past 15 years, rapid technological development in the field of neuroimaging has led to a resurgence of interest in the study of consciousness. However, the neural bases of consciousness and the boundaries of unconscious processing remain poorly understood. Anesthesia combined with functional neuroimaging presents a unique approach for studying neural responses as a function of consciousn...

BACKGROUND The general anesthetic state comprises behavioral and perceptual components, including amnesia, unconsciousness, analgesia, and immobility. In vitro, glutamatergic excitatory neurons are important targets for anesthetic action at the cellular and microcircuits levels. Riluzole (2-amino-6-[trifluoromethoxy]benzothiazole) is a neuroprotective drug that inhibits glutamate release from n...

Psychologists debate whether consciousness or unconsciousness is most central to human behavior. Our goal, instead, is to figure out how they work together. Conscious processes are partly produced by unconscious processes, and much information processing occurs outside of awareness. Yet, consciousness has advantages that the unconscious does not. We discuss how consciousness causes behavior, dr...

This work presents a compartmental model for delivery of three drugs (isoflurane, dopamine and sodium nitroprusside) for regulation of anesthesia. The key feature of this model is that mean arterial pressure, cardiac output and unconsciousness of the patient can be simultaneously regulated. This model is ‘validated’ by carrying out a number of dynamic state simulations and then used for designi...