This has probably been asked before ...but

That’s a good point: I didn’t lose my memory when I had an anaesthetic- if that was the case I doubt anyone would have surgery under anaesthetic - but whatever new memories were created (if any), I can’t recall. I guess it would be easy to tell if a patient was dreaming under anaesthetic or not but that may not be the only thing our ‘consciousness’ does when we’re asleep. I’d be surprised is there was zero activity during anaesthetic as a general rule, even if there was there are events such as those reported in NDEs. Then there’s terminal lucidity to consider....

Just to be sure. You're talking about General Anaesthetic?

How can you tell?

Just to be sure. You're talking about General Anaesthetic?

How can you tell?

Yes GA. What I mean is when I had recovered, I recall all the memories leading up to it (as far as I can rely on any memories). Right up to the anaesthetist talking to me. Am I answering the right question?

Yes GA. What I mean is when I had recovered, I recall all the memories leading up to it (as far as I can rely on any memories). Right up to the anaesthetist talking to me. Am I answering the right question?

I'm talking about the memories between 'going under' and 'coming to', I'm quite certain that's what Hammeroff means also. It is the only time in my life where my impression is that time just disappears.

I'm talking about the memories between 'going under' and 'coming to', I'm quite certain that's what Hammeroff means also. It is the only time in my life where my impression is that time just disappears.

Ah no I am with you. I have zero recollection of anything at all while I was under. This isn't unusual in itself for me as I hardly ever remember dreams, but the experience was not like sleeping which for me, isn't a continuous process, I move, I wake a bit then doze off again etc. At least the beginning wasn't wasn't like sleep. The waking up felt like normal waking up, except it was a quicker process than is usual for me.

I've read one member stating memories aren't in the brain.

Clearly they are not just in the brain... a trip to your local library should make that obvious.

Anyone who's had an operation under general anaesthetic knows that, at least in my case, it's the only time in my life that we really 'lost consciousness'. From the time that the chemical is injected and starting to count backwards from 100, 99,98, 97,96....then waking up maybe hours later! 

This seems to imply that our consciousness can be switched off by drugs. 

If it can be switched off by drugs, why not switched on by drugs? i.e. Generated by the brain.

Thoughts?

Luca Turin's interesting paper from 2014 investigating the effects of anesthetics on fruit flies, suggests anesthetics might allow electron's, which are isolated in the tiny hydrophobic cavities of proteins, to tunnel out of these cavities, causing a disruption to the processing that leads to our experiences.

Electron spin changes during general anesthesia in Drosophila

A very difficult experiment to conduct, and it has plenty of limitations, but they did measure an effect. Personally speaking I think they are on to something. Effects like 'spin' and it's susceptibility to magnetic fields is a promising area of research as far as I'm concerned.

Ah no I am with you. I have zero recollection of anything at all while I was under. This isn't unusual in itself for me as I hardly ever remember dreams, but the experience was not like sleeping which for me, isn't a continuous process, I move, I wake a bit then doze off again etc. At least the beginning wasn't wasn't like sleep. The waking up felt like normal waking up, except it was a quicker process than is usual for me.

LOL you must be fun in the morning! 

'Turning off' is certainly the best way that I can describe that sensation, it may well only be apparent, but do you think it is similar to any other experience you have had? Anything else that clips time the way that this does.

I'm just asking questions, nothing more. 

They've played recordings to people under anesthesia, and these subjects do show both inplicit and explicit recall of the recordings content.

Also, as others have pointed out, if the information was laid down in a different way during anesthesia, compared to the waking state, it may not be possible to recall it, because it was encoded in a different state, from the state one is in when trying to recall a memory. We can see such effects on recall - sometimes understood to be a contextual effect - with deep sea divers. What they learn on the surface, is much harder to recall/process when under water.

It's another reason why I think the classic hospital NDE OBE may be partly from third parties. It's the third parties which are laying down information on the patients brain, and because the encoding is closely related to their normal wakeful state, they can return to wakefulness and access it. But - and this is a key point - because the information was not laid down by them, they often can't easily interfere with it themselves (in the way we think about interference theory), allowing it to remain relatively untarnished over time, compared with other memories.

LOL you must be fun in the morning! 

Man I’m dreadful. I need total silence. Unfortunately my better half is noisy as hell.

I thought it would be interesting to look a little at what light clinical research might cast on these issues.

"Throughout the night, the sleeping brain cycles through three stages of non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, alternating with REM sleep, which is when most dreaming occurs. Each of these has a distinctive EEG pattern. None of those resembles the EEG of a brain under general anesthesia, however. In fact, general anesthesia EEG patterns are most similar to those of a comatose brain. As Brown points out, general anesthesia is essentially a “reversible coma.”" (http://news.mit.edu/2010/anesthesia-brown-0103)

Research has apparently shown that general anesthetic dreaming occurs just before emerging from the anesthesia, not during it. "Anesthetic-related dreaming seems to occur just before awakening and is associated with a rapid eye movement-like electroencephalographic pattern." (the researchers call it "covert REM") (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19672164)

"Dreaming was reported on emergence by 27% of propofol patients and 28% of desflurane patients. Patients reported simple dreams about family, friends, work, and recreation. No patients reported awareness during anesthesia, and there were no dreams that were suggestive of intraoperative memory formation." This was a study with 300 patients. (http://anesthesiology.pubs.asahq.org/art...id=1923911)

It looks as if during both the comatose condition and the general anesthesia induced quasi-comatose condition the brain is profoundly depressed in activity and there is no actual dreaming taking place, at least any indicated by EEG.

Of course all the research is done from the mind=brain materialist standpoint, and has worked out an elaborate set of hypotheses and theories along those lines. But from an interactive dualist standpoint I would interpret this to imply that maybe during deep general anesthesia the spirit is locked in to the physical brain and experiences nothing, certainly not the passage of time or dreams. Because the neurological machine it is locked into is functioning only at a very low level. As the person comes out of anesthesia the spirit progressively becomes no longer suppressed by the brain and starts to be aware. Sometimes dreaming occurs during this transient period of awakening. In a certain percentage of these occurrences the patient recalls the dreams.

I wonder if there are any mediumistic communications or channelings that address this. 

Studies showing evident recall of music or other things during general anesthesia seem to be due to the rare instances of anesthesia awareness occurring when the anesthesia is not deep enough, which often cause a lot of psychological problems.

We don't know whether the occasional recall of dreams during emergence from anesthesia is due to occasional formation of memories, or to occasional recall of memories that are always formed. It may be a clue that research indicates that it happens when the awakening process is prolonged somewhat.

The dreaming process looks like it is built in to the neurological design of the mammalian brain and fundamentally isn't a function of the spirit.