Cognitive unbinding: a neuroscientific paradigm of general anesthesia and related states of unconsciousness
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"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.
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Preservation of local neuronal activity with system-wide functional uncoupling is consistent with cognitive unbinding theory.
“the preservation of local neuronal activity in the setting of functional uncoupling across the system is consistent with the predictions of the cognitive unbinding theory of general anesthesia [158]”
From The Biology of General Anesthesia from Paramecium to Primate (2019) · cites this paper as [158]
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- Authors
- Mashour, G. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mashour, George A.
- ORCID
- Mashour, George A.
- Venue
- Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-12
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 2751-2759
- ISSN
- 0149-7634 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3870022
- OpenAlex
- W2058577273
- Cited by
- 92
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 13 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 2.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- James S. McDonnell Foundation
- National Institutes of Health
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine › Anesthesia and Sedative Agents
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Developmental Neuroscience › Anesthesia and Neurotoxicity Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Keywords
- general anesthesia, loss of consciousness, anesthetic-induced unconsciousness, sleep, disorders of consciousness, cognitive integration, anesthetic mechanisms, psychoanalysis
- MeSH terms
- Anesthesia, General, Cognition Disorders, Humans, Neurosciences, Unconsciousness
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