Sleep and Anesthesia: Neural Correlates in Theory and Experiment

Excerpt

After centuries of philosophical debate, techniques are now available that allow us to make meaningful inroads into understanding the neuronal underpinnings of consciousness. Studies that compare natural sleep and general anesthesia are at the forefront of this quest. Anesthetics are important tools that allow a rapid, reversible transition between states of consciousness. Many recent advances in the field are summarized in the book Sleep and Anesthesia, the newest addition to the Springer Series in Computational Neuroscience. The book was inspired by two workshops on sleep and anesthesia that were held at the Computational Neuroscience Conferences in Toronto (2007) and Berlin (2009). Many of the book’s contributors were featured speakers at these workshops. The book presents basic knowledge about the similarities and differences between sleep and various anesthetic states, along with an up-to-date account of the relevant neural mechanisms with a focus on theoretical mathematical modeling. Many of the experimental data used for the theoretical models were obtained using electrophysiological and imaging techniques. …