Awareness, dreaming and unconscious memory formation during anaesthesia in children

Recent studies have reported an incidence of awareness in children of around 1%, while older studies reported incidences varying from 0% to 5%. Measuring awareness in children requires techniques specifically adapted to a child's cognitive development and variations in incidence may be partly explained by the measures used. The causes and consequences of awareness in children remain poorly defined, though a consistent finding is that many children do not seem distressed by their memories. There are, however, some published reports of persistent psychological symptoms after episodes of childhood awareness. Compared to explicit memory, implicit memory is more robust in young children; however there is no evidence yet for implicit memory formation during anaesthesia in children. Children less than 3 years of age do not form explicit memory, although toddlers, infants and even neonates have signs of consciousness and implicit memory formation. In these very young children the relevance of awareness remains largely unknown.

Key words: awareness, memory, consciousness, children