Suppressing the Mind

By suppressing memory and consciousness - two components of the mind - anesthetics provide great relief to surgical patients and elicit wonder in clinicians and scientists. To-date we do not fully understand the mechanisms by which these effects are achieved. However, with recent advances in investigational technologies, ranging from molecular modeling and genetic manipulation to noninvasive functional brain imaging and computational approaches, substantial progress toward this goal has been made during the last decade.


Suppressing the Mind is a multidisciplinary collection of original results and authoritative overviews of the current state of knowledge of the problem written by investigators who are internationally known for their significant contribution to our current understanding of the mechanism of anesthesia. It attempts to bridge molecular, cellular, integrative and systems-level actions of anesthetics with respect to their effects on consciousness and memory. Through a better understanding of how anesthetics work, we hope to also uncover the neurobiological bases of some of the deepest mysteries of the human mind; how it self-reflectively knows, perceives and remembers.


This book should appeal to anesthesiologists, neurologists, psychologists, neuroscientists -- essentially anyone interested in anesthesia, consciousness, or memory. It provides insight into the current state of knowledge, and a perspective for future treatments of the subject as guided by novel hypotheses.