Assessing Propofol Anesthesia Susceptibility Based on Preoperative Source-Space EEG Connectivity in the Specific Frequency Band

Background: The susceptibility of different individuals to the same dosage of the same anesthetic drug is influenced by many factors. In addition to basic conditions such as age and gender, susceptibility to anesthesia is also related to brain activity during the resting state. However, the specific physiological mechanisms involved are still poorly understood. Methods: Twenty healthy volunteers who participated in propofol-induced sedation were divided into two groups according to their susceptibility to anesthesia and the electroencephalogram were recorded in baseline and moderate sedation states. Functional connectivity in the baseline was measured by the debiased weighted phase lag index between different brain regions to find band-specific differences in source space and sensor space respectively. Classifiers for anesthesia susceptibility were trained according to connectivity and based on bi-encoder autoencoder and convolutional neural network. Results: In the baseline state, the specific frequency band was mainly in the low alpha band, and showed that the subjects more sensitive to propofol had more weaker brain activities. Sourcespace functional connectivity in the specific band during the resting state could successfully assess the individual's susceptibility to propofol with an accuracy of 82.52%. Conclusions: The source-space functional connectivity in the specific frequency band during the resting state serves as a reliable biomarker that can effectively assess the susceptibility to propofol during anesthesia. This study offers novel insights to help anesthesiologists enable precision anesthesia.