麻醉药帮助我们理解什么是意识_BEC初级作文

麻醉药帮助我们理解什么是意识

It's easy to see the connections between this idea and the "ping" study. When the brain falls asleep, drifts into a coma or comes under the influence of anesthetic drugs, the ability to synthesize information disappears, though the brain doesn't cease to function. Figuring out a method for measuring intrabrain communication will be crucial for preventing operating-table awareness.

很容易看出，上述观点与脑电脉冲研究之间存在一定关联。当大脑陷入熟睡、昏迷或麻醉药物的影响之下时，虽然它并没有停止运作，但其综合信息的能力却消失了。找出一种可测定脑内通讯的方法对于防止患者在手术台上醒觉至关重要。

In the June 2013 issue of the journal Anesthesiology, Mashour proposed just that: a monitor that focuses on the brain's ability to communicate within itself. It's similar to the "ping" study but tracks a different signal. Activity in conscious brains has been shown to loop between sensory areas (the visual cortex in the rear of the brain, for example) and the higher-level parts of the brain associated with processing information (like the temporal lobe, just behind your ears). Mashour and others call this "recurrent processing": Signals travel from the sensory areas to the processing areas and back again. When somebody is unconscious, the recurrent proc-essing disappears. Mashour's study showed that this pattern — or lack thereof — is present in the brains of people anesthetized with three different classes of drugs. It's not just a side effect of one kind of medication. His work suggests that anesthesia monitors might be more effective if, rather than measuring the presence of electrical waves produced bythe brain, they monitor how electrical signals move around the brain.