Cognitive unbinding: A neuroscientific paradigm of general anesthesia and related states of unconsciousness

[摘要] Cognitive unbinding refers to the impaired synthesis of specialized cognitive activities in the brain and has been proposed as a mechanistic paradigm of unconsciousness. This article draws on recent neuroscientific data to revisit the tenets and predictions of cognitive unbinding, using general anesthesia as a representative state of unconsciousness. Current evidence from neuroimaging and neurophysiology supports the proposition that cognitive unbinding is a parsimonious explanation for the direct mechanism (or proximate cause) of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness across multiple drug classes. The relevance of cognitive unbinding to sleep, disorders of consciousness, and psychological processes is also explored. It is concluded that cognitive unbinding is a viable neuroscientific framework for unconscious processes across the fields of anesthesiology, sleep neurobiology, neurology and psychoanalysis. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[发布日期] 2013-12-01

[关键词] Consciousness;Unconsciousness;Cognitive binding;Cognitive unbinding;Information integration;Anesthesia;Unresponsive wakefulness syndrome;Sleep;Psychoanalysis