Brain imaging may pinpoint loss of perception under anaesthetic

Oxford University researchers have shown that measuring a type of brain activity in an individual under anaesthetic offers the clearest picture yet of degrees of perceptual awareness in the brain while they are anaesthetised. The research could lead to the first personalised method for administering appropriate doses of anaesthetic during operations and potentially reduce the risks associated with being under a general anaesthetic. 'Despite the hundreds of thousands of anaesthetics administered daily to patients, remarkably there is no robust, individualised indicator of perceptual awareness available,' said Professor Irene Tracey of the University of Oxford and senior author of the paper. 'While we can indirectly gauge whether a patient physically responds to their environment, this imaging method offers a much more nuanced approach. She added: 'The next stage in the development of this method will be to see if it is similarly illuminating when we monitor anaesthetised patients undergoing surgery. The work was carried out at the University of Oxford in the Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB) and is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine . Currently, when an individual is given anaesthetic for an operation, their organs' responses are monitored around the body, such as heart rate and rate of respiration.