Monitoring depth of anesthesia utilizing a combination of electroencephalographic and standard measures.

Background: For decades, monitoring depth of anesthesia was mainly based on unspecific effects of anesthetics, for example, blood pressure, heart rate, or drug concentrations. Today, electroencephalogram-based monitors promise a more specific assessment of the brain function. To date, most approaches were focused on a "head-to-head" comparison of either electroencephalogram- or standard parameter-based monitoring.

Evaluating the effectiveness of a memory aid system.

Background: The ability to remember future intentions is compromised in both healthy and cognitively impaired older adults. Assistive technology provides older adults with promising solutions to cope with this age-related problem. However, the effectiveness and efficiency of such systems as memory aids is seldom evaluated in controlled, randomized trials.

Adapted variable precision rough set approach for EEG analysis.

Objective: Rough set theory (RST) provides powerful methods for reduction of attributes and creation of decision rules, which have successfully been applied in numerous medical applications. The variable precision rough set model (VPRS model), an extension of the original rough set approach, tolerates some degree of misclassification of the training data. The basic idea of the VPRS model is to change the class information of those objects whose class information cannot be induced without contradiction from the available attributes.

A combination of electroencephalogram and auditory evoked potentials separates different levels of anesthesia in volunteers.

Background: It has been shown that the combination of electroencephalogram (EEG) and auditory evoked potentials (AEP) allows a good separation of consciousness from unconsciousness. In the present study, we sought a combined EEG/AEP indicator that allows both separation of consciousness from unconsciousness and discrimination among different levels of sedation and hypnosis over a wider range of anesthesia.

Methods: Fifteen unpremedicated volunteers received mono-anesthesia with sevoflurane or propofol in a randomized crossover design in two consecutive sessions.