Twenty five years ago, Sir John Carew Eccles together with Friedrich Beck proposed a quantum mechanical model of neurotransmitter release at synapses in the human cerebral cortex. The model endorsed causal influence of human consciousness upon the functioning of synapses in the brain through quantum tunneling of unidentified quasiparticles that trigger the exocytosis of synaptic vesicles, thereby initiating the transmission of information from the presynaptic towards the postsynaptic neuron. Here, we provide a molecular upgrade of the Beck and Eccles model (...) by identifying the quantum quasiparticles as Davydov solitons that twist the protein α-helices and trigger exocytosis of synaptic vesicles through helical zipping of the SNARE protein complex. We also calculate the observable probabilities for exocytosis based on the mass of this quasiparticle, along with the characteristics of the potential energy barrier through which tunneling is necessary. We further review the current experimental evidence in support of this novel bio-molecular model as presented. (shrink)

A unifying theory of general anesthetic-induced unconsciousness must explain the common mechanism through which various anesthetic agents produce unconsciousness. Functional-brain-imaging data obtained from 11 volunteers during general anesthesia showed specific suppression of regional thalamic and midbrain reticular formation activity across two different commonly used volatile agents. These findings are discussed in relation to findings from sleep neurophysiology and the implications of this work for consciousness research. It is hypothesized that the essential common neurophysiologic mechanism underlying anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is, (...) as with sleep-induced unconsciousness, a hyperpolarization block of thalamocortical neurons. A model of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is introduced to explain how the plethora of effects anesthetics have on cellular functioning ultimately all converge on a single neuroanatomic/neurophysiologic system, thus providing for a unitary physiologic theory of narcosis related to consciousness. (shrink)

"The location of the author’s investigations, the body itself rather than the sphere of subjective representations of self and of function in cultures, is wholly new.... I believe this work will be a landmark in future feminist thinking." —Alphonso Lingis "This is a text of rare erudition and intellectual force. It will not only introduce feminists to an enriching set of theoretical perspectives but sets a high critical standard for feminist dialogues on the status of the body." —Judith Butler (...) class='Hi'>Volatile Bodies demonstrates that the sexually specific body is socially constructed: biology or nature is not opposed to or in conflict with culture. Human biology is inherently social and has no pure or natural "origin" outside of culture. Being the raw material of social and cultural organization, it is "incomplete" and thus subject to the endless rewriting and social inscription that constitute all sign systems. Examining the theories of Freud, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, etc. on the subject of the body, Elizabeth Grosz concludes that the body they theorize is male. These thinkers are not providing an account of "human" corporeality but of male corporeality. Grosz then turns to corporeal experiences unique to women—menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, menopause. Her examination of female experience lays the groundwork for developing theories of sexed corporeality rather than merely rectifying flawed models of male theorists. (shrink)

Is a painful experience less bad for you if you will not remember it? Do you have less reason to fear it? These questions bear on how we think about medical procedures and surgeries that use an anesthesia regimen that leaves patients conscious – and potentially in pain – but results in complete ‘drug-induced amnesia’ after the fact. I argue that drug-induced amnesia does not render a painful medical procedure a less fitting object of fear, and thus the prospect (...) of amnesia does not give patients a reason not to fear it. I expose three mistakes in reasoning that might explain our tendency to view pain or discomfort as less fearful in virtue of expected amnesia: a mistaken view of personal identity; a mistaken view of the target of anticipation; and a mistaken method of incorporating past evidence into calculations about future experiences. Ultimately my argument has implications for whether particular procedures are justified and how medical professionals should speak with anxious patients about the prospect of drug-induced amnesia. (shrink)

This article engages two fundamentally different kinds of so-called natural law arguments in favor of specific moral absolutes: Elizabeth Anscombe's claim that certain actions are known to be intrinsically wrong through intuition, and John Finnis's claim that such actions are known to be wrong because they involve acting directly against a basic human good. Both authors maintain, for example, that murder and contraceptive sexual acts are known to be wrong, always and everywhere, through their respective epistemological lens. This article uses (...) the counter-example of anesthesia to challenge these two approaches to substantiating natural law claims. The paper concludes by rejecting the view shared by Professors Finnis and Anscombe that once one rejects these foundations for moral absolutes, one is left with moral subjectivism. In fact, one is left with moral absolutes of a more restricted nature, which are known philosophically, and with more robust moral absolutes held on religious grounds. Virtues are needed in the moral life, among other reasons, because such norms require discernment and integrity for their correct application. (shrink)

Possible systemic effects of general anesthetic agents on neural information processing are discussed in the context of the thalamocortical suppression hypothesis presented by Drs. Alkire, Haier, and Fallon (this issue) in their PET study of the anesthetized state. Accounts of the neural requisites of consciousness fall into two broad categories. Neuronal-specificity theories postulate that activity in particular neural populations is sufficient for conscious awareness, while process-coherence theories postulate that particular organizations of neural activity are sufficient. Accounts of anesthetic narcosis, on (...) the other hand, explain losses of consciousness in terms of neural signal-suppressions, transmission blocks, and the disruptions of signal interpretation. While signal-suppression may account for the actions of some anesthetic agents, the existence of anesthetics, such as choralose, that cause both loss of consciousness and elevated discharge rates, is problematic for a general theory of narcosis that is based purely on signal suppression and transmission-block. However, anesthetic agents also alter relative firing rates and temporal discharge patterns that may disrupt the coherence of neural signals and the functioning of the neural networks that interpret them. It is difficult at present, solely on the basis of regional brain metabolic rates, to test process-coherence hypotheses regarding organizational requisites for conscious awareness. While these pioneering PET studies have great merit as panoramic windows of mind-brain correlates, wider ranges of theory and empirical evidence need to be brought into the formulation of truly comprehensive theories of consciousness and anesthesia. (shrink)

It has long been recognized that productivity growth and the business cycle are closely interrelated. Yet, until recently, the two phenomena have been investigated separately in the economics literature. This book provides the first consistent attempt to analyze the effects of macroeconomic volatility on productivity growth, and also the reverse causality from growth to business cycles. The authors show that by looking at the economy through the lens of private entrepreneurs, who invest under credit constraints, one can go some way (...) towards explaining persistent macroeconomic volatility and the effects of volatility on growth. Beginning with an analysis of the effects of volatility on growth, the authors argue that the lower the level of financial development in a country the more detrimental the effect of volatility on growth. This prediction is confirmed by cross-country panel regressions. The data also suggests that a fixed exchange rate regime or more countercyclical budgetary policies are growth-enhancing in countries with a lower level of financial development. The former reduce aggregate volatility whereas the latter reduce the negative effects of volatility on long-term productivity-enhancing investment by firms. The book concludes with an investigation into how the interplay between credit constraints and pecuniary externalities is sufficient to generate persistent business cycles and to explain the occurrence of currency crises. (shrink)

For patients under anesthesia, it is extremely important to be able to ascertain from a scientific, third person point of view to what extent consciousness is correlated with specific areas of brain activity. Errors in accurately determining when a patient is having conscious states, such as conscious perceptions or pains, can have catastrophic results. Here, I argue that the effects of (at least some kinds of) anesthesia lend support to the notion that neither basic sensory areas nor the (...) prefrontal cortex (PFC) is sufficient to produce conscious states. I also argue that it this is consistent with and supportive of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness. I therefore disagree in some ways with Mehta and Mashour (2013), who argue that evidence from anesthesia mainly favors a first-order representational (FOR) theory, as opposed to HOT theory (and many other theories, for that matter). (shrink)

In general anesthesia, a “cocktail” of drugs renders a patient unconscious, in what has been called a “controlled coma”. Various measures of patient awareness involve overt behavior, autonomic nervous system activity, processed EEG, and event‐related potentials. The incidence of intraoperative awareness is very low, but anecdotal reports suggest that patients might process surgical events unconsciously, leading to unconscious postoperative memories. Careful experimental studies show that priming effects, similar to those observed in implicit memory, can be spared even in the (...) absence of conscious recollection, an outcome which indicates that unconscious perception can occur even in clinically adequate general anesthesia. Deeper planes of amnesia, however, appear to abolish both explicit and implicit perception. (shrink)

This article analyses problem situations in the context of anaesthesia care. It considers what it means for nurse anaesthetists to be in problematic situations in the anaesthesia care of older patients. Benner’s interpretive phenomenological approach proved useful for this purpose. Paradigm cases are used to aid the analysis of individual nurses’ experiences. Thirty narrated problematic anaesthesia care situations derived from seven interviews were studied. These show that experienced nurse anaesthetists perceive anaesthesia care as problematic and highly demanding when involving older (...) patients. To be in problematic anaesthesia care situations means becoming morally distressed, which arises from the experience or from being prevented from acting according to one’s legal and moral duty of care. An important issue that emerged from this study was the need for an ethical forum to discuss and articulate moral issues, so that moral stress of the kind experienced by these nurse anaesthetists can be dealt with and hopefully reduced. (shrink)

Empirical work is reviewed which correlates the presence or absence of various parts of the auditory evoked potential with the disappearance and reemergence of auditory sensation during induction of and recovery from anesthesia. As a result, the hypothesis is generated that the electrophysiological correlate of auditory sensation is whatever neural activity generates the middle latency waves of the auditory evoked potential. This activity occurs from 20 to 80 ms poststimulus in the primary and secondary areas of the auditory cortex. (...) Evidence is presented suggesting that earlier or later waves in the auditory evoked potential do not covary with auditory sensation (as opposed to auditory perception) and it is therefore suggested that they are possibly not the electrophysiological correlates of sensation. (shrink)

Volatility is widely used in different financial areas, and forecasting the volatility of financial assets can be valuable. In this paper, we use deep neural network and long short-term memory model to forecast the volatility of stock index. Most related research studies use distance loss function to train the machine learning models, and they gain two disadvantages. The first one is that they introduce errors when using estimated volatility to be the forecasting target, and the second one is that their (...) models cannot be compared to econometric models fairly. To solve these two problems, we further introduce a likelihood-based loss function to train the deep learning models and test all the models by the likelihood of the test sample. The results show that our deep learning models with likelihood-based loss function can forecast volatility more precisely than the econometric model and the deep learning models with distance loss function, and the LSTM model is the better one in the two deep learning models with likelihood-based loss function. (shrink)

General anesthesia provides an alternative to typical laboratory paradigms for investigating implicit learning. We assess the evidence that a simple type of learning—priming—can occur without consciousness. Although priming has been shown to be a small but persistent phenomenon in surgical patients there is reason to question whether it occurs implicitly due to problems in detecting awareness using typical clinical signs. This paper reviews the published studies on priming during anesthesia that have included a measure of awareness or of (...) anesthetic depth. We conclude that perceptual priming, but not conceptual priming, takes place in the absence of conscious awareness. (shrink)

I argue for the existence of a category of practical reasons which I call "Deliberation-Volatile Reasons" or "DVRs". DVRs have the distinguishing feature that their status as reasons for action is diminished when they are weighed in deliberation by the agent. I argue that DVRs are evidence of "deliberative blind spots". I submit that an agent manifests a peculiar kind of practical irrationality in so far as she endeavours to find a deliberative path to what she has reason to (...) do, when the discovery of such a path renders the destination inaccessible. (shrink)

Research on learning under anesthesia has focused on showing that learning is possible in the absence of awareness. However, a simple dissociation between learning and awareness is conclusive only under strong additional assumptions, and the actual state of consciousness of an anesthetized person is difficult to determine. Instead of trying to establish complete unconsciousness, one might employ gradual anesthesia to experimentally vary the level of consciousness in a controlled fashion, checking whether cognitive processes exist that can change in (...) opposite direction to measures of awareness. (shrink)

Volatile Knowing refers to the positive change that can result when parents and teachers talk together about the politics of school reform. Based on a study of teachers and parents who researched aspects of the accountability movement typically censored in mainstream media, Volatile Knowing reveals the hidden power behind current reform efforts that serve private, not public interests. It is aimed at provoking a new, child-centered movement for accountability and creativity in the nation's schools.

Volatile Knowing refers to the positive change that can result when parents and teachers talk together about the politics of school reform. Based on a study of teachers and parents who researched aspects of the accountability movement typically censored in mainstream media, Volatile Knowing reveals the hidden power behind current reform efforts that serve private, not public interests. It is aimed at provoking a new, child-centered movement for accountability and creativity in the nation's schools.

This paper presents research regarding the monitoring of the brain and the adequacy of anesthesia during surgery. Particular variables are derived from EEG and ECG signals and are correlated to anesthetic gas (sevoflurane) concentration, in pediatric anesthesia. The methods used for parameter extraction are based on change detection theory and time-frequency representation. Preliminary results show that the expired anesthetic gas concentration modulates both the heart rate variability and the duration of the burst suppression. Monitors of the central nervous (...) system and autonomic nervous system activities can be expected to be based on these variables. (shrink)

It has frequently been suggested that science and religion are innately in conflict. One example from the history of medicine is the introduction of anaesthesia into obstetrics in 1847, which is commonly said to have stimulated massive religious opposition. Historians have almost unanimously averred that such opposition arose from the belief that obstetric anaesthesia interfered with the primeval curse— ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children’ . Despite considerable opposition to obstetric anaesthesia upon medical, physiological, and general moral grounds, evidence (...) of genuine religious opposition in contemporary sources has proved to be virtually non-existent. On examination, this particular ‘conflict’ appears to be an artifact of historiography based upon a contemporary defence prepared against an attack which never materialized. (shrink)

Grossi, Antonio This article discusses anaesthesia, the role of the anaesthetist and its ethical challenges. In the current political climate of task substitution and de-professionalisation, it is worth considering the role of the anaesthetist and the relevant ethical issues pertaining to this endeavour.

This study investigates the volatility risk premium on the emerging financial market. We also consider the expected return and ESG sentiment. Based on the SSE 50 ETF 5-minute high-frequency spots and daily options data from 2016 to 2021, we adopt nonparametric model-free approaches to calculate realized and implied volatilities. And the volatility risk premium is constructed by subtracting these volatility series. We examine the relations between the volatility risk premium and future excess returns as well as ESG sentiment through multifactor (...) specifications. We find that the volatility risk premium also exists in the Chinese market and is significantly negative. In addition, the statistically positive correlation between the volatility risk premium and aggregate returns is an outlier compared to the empirically negative pattern in developed markets. At last, ESG sentiment is positively associated with the volatility risk premium, especially the impact of environmental and social. This evidence supports the agency theory, which indicates that investors perceive ESG investments as waste resources in a short term and become potentially risky. (shrink)

The abrupt climate change thesis suggests that climate passes through threshold transitions, after which change is sudden, runaway and unstoppable. This concurs with recent themes in complexity studies. Data from ice cores indicates that major shifts in global climate regimes have occurred in as little as a decade, and that for most of the span of human existence the climate has oscillated much more violently than it has over the last 10,000 years. This evidence presents enormous challenges for international climate (...) change negotiation and regulation, which has thus far focused on gradual change. It is argued that existing social theoretic engagements with physical agency are insufficiently geared towards dissonant or disastrous physical events. Wagering on the past and future importance of abrupt climate change, the article explores a way of engaging with catastrophic climatic change that stresses the inherent volatility and unpredictability of earth process, and the no-less-inherent vulnerability of the human body. Drawing on Bataille and Derrida, it proposes a way of nestling the issue of environmental justice within a broader sense of immeasurable indebtedness to those humans who endured previous episodes of abrupt climate change, and considers the idea of experimentation and generosity without reserve. (shrink)

It is no accident that white privilege designed to be both be invisible and weightless to white people. Alison Bailey’s “On White Privilege and Anesthesia: Why Does Peggy McIntosh’s Knapsack Feel Weightless?” extends a weighty invitation white readers to complete the unpacking task McIntosh (1988) began when she compared white privilege to an “invisible and weightless knapsack.” McIntosh focuses primarily making white privilege visible to white people. Bailey’s project continues the conversation by extending a ‘weighty invitation’ to white readers (...) to explore why the metaphorical knapsack, despite the weight of its contents, feels weightless. Here’s the short answer. The knapsack only feels weightless because white people have become anesthetized us to our own brokenness. We are more comfortable considering what white privilege does for us than what it does to us. People of color feel the weight of whiteness every day. The weighty invitation invites white readers to become sensitive to our own insensitivity. To do this Bailey (1) explores white resistance to unpacking the weight; (2) people of color’s testimonies to the daily impact of the weight on their bodies; and (3) how the anesthesia of white privilege distorts our humanity. The article concludes with a McIntosh style list of that the anesthesia of privilege distorts white people’s humanity. (shrink)

Anesthetic gas molecules are recognized to act by van der Waals (London dispersion) forces in hydrophobic pockets of select brain proteins to ablate consciousness. Enigmatic features of consciousness have defied conventional neurophysiological exp lanations and prompted suggestions for supplemental occurrence of macroscopic quantum coherent states and quantum computation in the brain. Are these feasible? During conscious (non-anesthetic) conditions, endogenous Van der Waals London dispersion forces occur among non-polar amino acid groups in hydrophobic pockets of neural proteins and help regulate their (...) conformation/function. London forces are weak instantaneous couplings between pairs of electron induced dipoles (e.g. between adjacent non-polar amino acid groups), and are quantum mechanical effects capable of supporting quantum superposition/computation and macroscopic quantum coherence. Quantum effects mediated by endogenous London forces in hydrophobic pockets of select neural proteins may be necessary for consciousness. The mechanism of anesthetics may be to inhibit (by exogenous London forces) the necessary quantum states. (shrink)

Evil should be characterised as a specific constellation, which results from destructive connections between individual activities and systemic influences. The article shows some important aspects of the structure of evil and prefers the terms of wickedness and obscene coincidences to describe its own character. Therefore, also the division between rationality and affectivity appears as inadequate, because evil has on the one side an intrinsic attractiveness for individuals and is on the other side in modern societies more and more a product (...) of a rationality, which is free from passion. Especially the emotional impoverishment is responsible for the increase of evil, which is demonstrated by two examples. Based on Paul Ricoeur, the evolution of malum can be developed by a short analyse of the relationship between Ethics and Emotions. (shrink)

Philosophical (p-) zombies are constructs that possess all of the behavioral features and responses of a sentient human being, yet are not conscious. P-zombies are intimately linked to the hard problem of consciousness and have been invoked as arguments against physicalist approaches. But what if we were to invert the characteristics of p-zombies? Such an inverse (i-) zombie would possess all of the behavioral features and responses of an insensate being yet would nonetheless be conscious. While p-zombies are logically possible (...) but naturally improbable, an approximation of i-zombies actually exists: individuals experiencing what is referred to as “anesthesia awareness.” Patients under general anesthesia may be intubated (preventing speech), paralyzed (preventing movement), and narcotized (minimizing response to nociceptive stimuli). Thus, they appear—and typically are—unconscious. In 1-2 cases/1000, however, patients may be aware of intraoperative events, sometimes without any objective indices. Furthermore, a much higher percentage of patients (22% in a recent study) may have the subjective experience of dreaming during general anesthesia. P-zombies confront us with the hard problem of consciousness—how do we explain the presence of qualia? I-zombies present a more practical problem—how do we detect the presence of qualia? The current investigation compares p-zombies to i-zombies and explores the “hard problem” of unconsciousness with a focus on anesthesia awareness. (shrink)

Financial internationalization leads to similar fluctuations and spillover effects in financial markets around the world, resulting in cross-border financial risks. This study examines comovements across G20 international stock markets while considering the volatility similarity and spillover effects. We provide a new approach using an ICA- based ARMA-APARCH-M model to shed light on whether there are spillover effects among G20 stock markets with similar dynamics. Specifically, we first identify which G20 stock markets have similar volatility features using a fuzzy C-means time (...) series clustering method and then investigate the dominant source of volatility spillovers using the ICA-based ARMA-APARCH-M model. The evidence has shown that the ICA method can more accurately capture market comovements with nonnormal distributions of the financial time series data by transforming the multivariate time series into statistically independent components. Our findings indicate that the G20 stock markets are clustered into three categories according to volatility similarity. There are spillover effects in stock market comovements of each group and the dominant source can be identified. This study has important implications for investors in international financial markets and for policymakers in G20 countries. (shrink)

The outcomes of sports and competitive games excite intense emotions in many people, even when those same people acknowledge that those outcomes are of trifling importance. I call this incongruity between the judged importance of the outcome and the intense reactions it provokes the Puzzle of Sport. The puzzle can be usefully compared to another puzzle in aesthetics: the Paradox of Fiction, which asks how it is we become emotionally caught up with events and characters we know to be unreal. (...) In this article, I examine the prospects of understanding our engagement with competitive games on the model of our engagement with works of fiction, thus enabling analogous explanations for both puzzles. I show that there are significant problems with such an approach and offer an alternative, mobilizing ideas from David Velleman and Thomas Nagel, that appeals to the volatility of our motivational attitudes. (shrink)

Professional directives are unwavering: educational intimate exams should only ever occur with patients’ explicit consent. This article describes the current clinical, educational, and ethical landscape of educational pelvic examinations under anesthesia, underscores the imperative that these exams only ever occur with patients’ explicit consent, and offers accessible modifications to students’ involvement in these exams.

A new explanation of kurtosis in asset price behavior is proposed involving flare attractors. Such attractors depend on chaotic fundamentals driving subsystems which trigger nonlinearly response functions each with a switching mechanism representing the changing of agents from stabilizing to destabilizing behavior. Heterogeneous agent types are shown by a set of these response functions that are interlinked. With a larger number of agent types system behavior resembles that of many financial markets. Such a model is consistent with newer approaches relying (...) upon evolutionary learning mechanisms with heterogeneous agents as well as models depending on fractal characteristics. (shrink)