Indeed there is several monitors that can be used to measure “awareness” including entropy, bi-spectral index, and SEDline to name a few. SEDline is my personal favourite as you can see when a patient has complete “burst suppressions” - this is a total absence of brain activity at all and has been associated with post anesthetic delirium particularly in elderly patients.

Oh now that sounds worrying again. Maybe there is a trade-off between being spared pain and losing IQ points.

I don’t think so.