Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to A paralyzing experience

BIS monitoring
LJ — (archived)

Level of consciousness is not too difficult to measure. I sympathize with your experience with anaesthesia, Daniel - my wife had a similar encounter while being prepped for an emergency caesarian with our second child. But an EEG would most definitely have shown a high degree of activity, and the particulars of these signals that relate to level of consiousness have been isolated and used to build a monitor dedicated to measuring such levels reliably and easily. It can be used in surgery to maintain an adequate level of anaesthesia, in treatment of patients in induced comas, and many other situations. Our small hospital has recently installed a monitoring system that has this capability and the medical staff are quite excited about using it. The system is referred to as BIS, for BISpectral index - a good article about it in New Scientist here.

There is always the argument that something may be beyond measurement, but I think that between CT, MRI and PET scans and EEG monitoring, as well as studies using implanted electrodes and others, brain function (or not) can be reliably determined. Higher brain activity is necessary, in my opinion, for human existence (as opposed to a mechanically functioning body). Any other unmeasurable parameters that might determine "humanity" are in the realm of "paranormal phenomena"... one can postulate almost anything so long as it is unmeasurable.

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