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Brain Networks and Consciousness

NCT04502550 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 63

Last updated 2025-02-19

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

General anesthesia (GA) is a medically induced state of unresponsiveness and unconsciousness, which millions of people experience every year. Despite its ubiquity, a clear and consistent picture of the brain circuits mediating consciousness and responsiveness has not emerged. Studies to date are limited by lack of direct recordings in human brain during medically induced anesthesia. Our overall hypothesis is that the current model of consciousness, originally proposed to model disorders and recovery of consciousness after brain injury, can be generalized to understand mechanisms of consciousness more broadly. This will be studied through three specific aims. The first is to evaluate the difference in anesthesia sensitivity in patients with and without underlying basal ganglia pathology. Second is to correlate changes in brain circuitry with induction and emergence from anesthesia. The third aim is to evaluate the effects of targeted deep brain stimulation on anesthesia induced loss and recovery of consciousness. This study focuses on experimentally studying these related brain circuits by taking advantage of pathological differences in movement disorder patient populations undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery. DBS is a neurosurgical procedure that is used as treatment for movement disorders, such as Parkinson's disease and essential tremor, and provides a mechanism to acquire brain activity recordings in subcortical structures. This study will provide important insight by using human data to shed light on the generalizability of the current model of consciousness. The subject's surgery for DBS will be prolonged by up to 40 minutes in order to record the participant's brain activity and their responses to verbal and auditory stimuli.

Conditions

Interventions

DRUG

Propofol

Target effect-site concentration of propofol will be started at 1.4 μg/mL and will be increased by 0.3 μg/mL with reassessment until endpoints are achieved.

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Nader Pouratian, MD, PhD · University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2020-10-15
Primary Completion
2024-11-14
Completion
2024-11-14

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Diseases
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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04502550 on ClinicalTrials.gov