Sedation and Sleep Thresholds in Elderly Patients with Memory Disorder

Abstract

An attempt has been made to conjoin Pauling''s view of the role of electrical brain oscillations in consciousness and the effects of anaesthetics with Hebb''s notion of the part reverberatory circuits play in short-term memory. If a reduction in the adequacy of such oscillatory processes underlies the disability in short-term storage shown by the memory-disordered then these patients should show greater suceptibility to the effects of anaesthetics and thus lower sedation and sleep thresholds than matched controls. This expectation was upheld when these thresholds were estimated by administering sodium amytal intravenously to 10 elderly psychiatric patients with memory-disorder and their performance compared with that of 10 elderly patients without memory-disorder.