BRACCIA - Brain, Respiration and Cardiac Causalities in Anaesthesia

The aim of the BRACCIA project is to reduce the fraction of people who experience pain during surgical procedures carried out under general anaesthesia. Within the project, researchers explore the coupled dynamics of the cardiorespiratory and neural systems of the human body. The interactions and synchronization in the brain activity are studied using the ideas of the theory of complex networks. Differences found in the dynamical states in awake and asleep patients will indicate possible ways of reliably measuring the depth of anaesthesia thereby improving the information the anaesthetist works with during a surgical procedure. The research is divided into three main areas: data acquisition, modeling of the dynamics and data analysis.