Understand the brain. Ask better questions.

• The brain changes across life. Some slowing is normal; memory loss that disrupts daily life is not.
• Early signs worth discussing with a doctor: repeating questions, getting lost in familiar places, trouble with familiar tasks, changes in mood or judgment.
• Sleep, blood pressure, hearing, mood and social connection all affect long-term brain health.

Talk to your doctor. Only 14% of adults have discussed brain health with theirs.

Each year, millions of older adults have surgery with anesthesia. Modern anesthesia is very safe, but the brain is part of the picture.

Anesthesia drugs work differently on the brain, but research shows they all disrupt how brain regions communicate, which is how consciousness switches off.

Postoperative delirium

Sudden confusion after surgery, more common in older adults. It is often preventable, and it matters: it is linked to longer-term cognitive decline.

Who is at higher risk?

• Older age and existing memory problems.
• Hearing or vision loss and poor sleep.
• Many medications and major surgery.

Learn more from the ASA Perioperative Brain Health Initiative ↗.

What is EEG?

Small sensors on the scalp read the brain's electrical activity, the same signal used in sleep labs and neurology clinics.

In the operating room today

Many anesthesia teams use processed EEG monitors, usually a sensor on the forehead, to help gauge how deeply a patient is anesthetized.

What's hard

Different anesthesia drugs change brain signals in different ways, and older brains respond differently, so one number does not always tell the whole story.

Where it's going

• Watching how brain regions talk to each other, not just how active they are.
• Monitoring in more places: sedation in clinics, dental offices, ICUs and the field.
• Measuring brain health before and after surgery to catch problems early.
• Wearable and at-home brain monitoring.
• Using AI to read complex brain signals, with clinicians in charge.

Educational only. Not a description of any specific product.

AI is changing how we think: what we remember, how long we focus, and which tasks we hand off.

Questions we explore

• Does offloading thinking to AI weaken or free the mind?
• How do we protect attention?
• Who owns data from brain-reading devices?

Neural data privacy is now a legal question; states are starting to write rules.

These track the 14 modifiable risk factors identified by the Lancet Commission (2024).