CCN Colloquium: "Delirium in Older Surgery Patients: A Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurobiological, and Multi-Organ System Perspective"

Delirium is the most common post-surgical complication among older adults. Despite its prevalence, delirium-an acute disorder of attention and arousal-can be devastating for patients as it increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease and death. This presentation will review what is known about delirium from a cognitive neuroscience and neurobiological perspective. It will also introduce the brain-heart-immune axis, a multi-system framework that we developed to characterize possible delirium vulnerability. Finally, our group has identified pre-surgery EEG patterns associated with resilient attentional control and diminished delirium severity after surgery. These new EEG data suggest that attentional control may play a critical role in neurocognitive resilience among older surgery patients.