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Transient fixation on a non‐native language associated with anaesthesia
Author(s) -
Webster C. S.,
Grieve R. O. S.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
anaesthesia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.839
H-Index - 117
eISSN - 1365-2044
pISSN - 0003-2409
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2044.2004.04082.x
Subject(s) - medicine , consciousness , anesthesia , general anaesthesia , fixation (population genetics) , context (archaeology) , general anaesthetic , english language , surgery , linguistics , neuroscience , psychology , paleontology , population , environmental health , biology , philosophy
Summary We report a patient with the unusual language disturbance of transient fixation on a non‐native language after otherwise uneventful general anaesthesia. The patient was unable to speak his native language for a period of 5–10 min, despite a desire to do so. He fully and spontaneously recovered from the episode. The phenomenon raises a number of interesting questions about the nature of human language, anaesthesia and consciousness. We discuss our patient in the context of some of these questions and present a review of three similar patients reported in the anaesthetic literature.