On no man's land: Subjective experiences during unresponsive and responsive sedative states induced by four different anesthetic agents.
Consciousness and Cognition November 1, 2021 Linda Radek, Lauri Koskinen, Nils Sandman et al.
Subjective experiences, most often dreaming or incorporating elements of the setting, are common during sedation with anesthetics that act through different molecular mechanisms. In healthy male participants given equisedative doses of dexmedetomidine, propofol, sevoflurane, or S-ketamine for one hour, 46.9% of those who were arousable reported experiences. Dexmedetomidine was associated with the most frequent reports, while S-ketamine produced the most multimodal experiences. Whether participants were responsive at the end of administration did not affect the prevalence or content of the experiences. The differences between drugs were small in this sample.