Anesthesia and neuroimaging: investigating the neural correlates of unconsciousness.
Alex A. MacDonald, Lorina Naci, Penny A MacDonald, Adrian M. Owen
Trends in Cognitive Sciences January 12, 2015 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2014.12.005 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Review Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Brain Neural pathways Humans Consciousness disorders Unconsciousness Anesthetics Neuroimaging Anesthesia Awareness Disorders of consciousness Unconscious processing |
| Key findings | The authors synthesize functional neuroimaging findings from studies using anesthetic drugs to probe cognition at different levels of conscious awareness, arguing that this approach offers a unique window into the neural bases of consciousness. They relate these results to psychophysical studies and suggest they may help interpret clinical findings in non-responsive patients, while noting that the boundaries of unconscious processing remain poorly understood. |
Abstract
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 consciousness. In this review we summarize findings from functional neuroimaging studies that have used anesthetic drugs to study cognition at different levels of conscious awareness. We relate the results to those of psychophysical studies of cognition and explore their potential usefulness in interpreting clinical findings from studies of non-responsive patients.
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- Are we really unconscious in "unconscious" states? Common assumptions revisited. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2022
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Cites 22
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