C.R. Stephen Lectures

Featured Speaker

Max B. Kelz, MD, PhD
Lee A. Fleisher Professor and Vice Chair of Research 
Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care
University of Pennsylvania

Inspired by a case of delayed emergence, in which a narcoleptic patient took more than six hours to regain consciousness after an anesthetic whose known actions dissipated in minutes, Dr. Kelz began to question where and how general anesthetics exert their hypnotic effects. In the process, Dr. Kelz became one of the first to question the notion that exit from the anesthetic state is a passive, mechanistic mirror image of anesthetic induction. Rather his studies in mice genetically engineered to develop postnatal narcolepsy demonstrated that neuronal events permitting recovery of consciousness could be distinct from those enabling entry into the anesthetic state.

The Kelz Lab also discovered that the brain harbors intrinsic mechanisms to track whether it is awake or unconscious and attempts to resist changes in its arousal state—a process termed neural inertia. He has proved that such basic mechanisms leading to hysteresis are highly conserved across invertebrates and mammals and have implications for return of cognition in humans exiting states of general anesthesia.

Dr. Kelz serves as FAER’s President and Chief Scientific Officer. He is the Lee A. Fleisher Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the University of Pennsylvania.

Event Registration

To register for this event, please contact Lauren Lachance at lachance@wustl.edu.