Marco Samuel Fabuš

My research interests are in electrophysiological effects of anaesthetics, especially as pertaining to neurophysiology. I focus on analysis of non-invasive brain activity data collected during anaesthesia to understand states that brains go through when losing and regaing perception of the external world.

Dr. Katie Warnaby, my supervisor, and her colleagues identified a marked change in brain activity under increasing doses of anaesthesia termed slow-wave saturation (SWAS). This pattern has been found present in volunteer data as well as data collected during routine surgical anaesthesia. Our group has recently been working on clinically translating this hypothesised marker of loss of perception by developing a novel depth of anaesthesia monitor utilising real-time slow-wave power calculation, validating it with a simultaneous EEG-fMRI study in volunteers as well a concurrent patient study. 

My DPhil builds on this work by further exploring the roles of slow waves. I use novel analysis tools including those recently developed in the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity (OHBA) under Prof. Mark Woolrich. We are especially interested in anaesthetic-dependent differences, heart-brain interactions, links to underlying target receptors, and brain state transitions during anaesthesia. Understanding these will allow for better anaesthetic dosing and the potential to avoid postoperative problems such as delirium.

I am also interested in electrophysiology of non-traditional uses of anaesthetics, mainly the use of subanaesthetic ketamine to treat depression.

My background is in Physics where I obtained a Master's degree at St. John's College, Oxford, coming first in the year. My MPhys project under the supervision of Dr. Katie Warnaby and Prof. Myles Allen developed a new model of anaesthetic slow-wave power based on an analogy to a model of ferromagnetic hysteresis.