Authors:
Nicoletta Nicolaou
1
;
Julius Georgiou
1
;
Saverios Houris
2
and
Pandelitsa Alexandrou
2
Affiliations:
1
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
;
2
Nicosia General Hospital, Cyprus
Keyword(s):
Anaesthesia monitoring, Electroencephalogram, Granger causality, Synchronisation, Bidirectional interaction.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications and Services
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Biomedical Signal Processing
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Medical Image Detection, Acquisition, Analysis and Processing
Abstract:
General anaesthesia is a reversible state whereby conscious experience is disrupted and reflexes to afferent stimuli are depressed. The precise method of action of anaesthetic agents is still largely unknown. However, the administration of anaesthetics causes observable changes in the electrical brain activity (EEG), the study of which can provide an insight into the mechanism of action of general anaesthesia. This paper investigates the patterns of bidirectional interactions that are manifest in brain activity during anaesthetic induction with propofol. Granger Causality is applied to the EEG of patients scheduled for surgery under general anaesthesia as a means of characterising the interactions between different brain areas prior and after the administration of the anaesthetic agents. Strong unidirectional information flow between frontal and posterior areas was found to occur shortly after anaesthetic induction.