Anesthesia produces shared neural activity patterns across six species

edited by Sadie Harley , reviewed by Robert Egan

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Add to Preferred Sources Diverse general anesthetics, despite differences in molecular structure and pharmacology, induce a conserved shift in neural dynamics across species that span hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Across humans, non-human primates, mice, zebrafish and nematodes, anesthesia is associated with altered local time scales, reduced predictability of neural activity, and weakened coordination across brain regions or neural elements. Credit: Luppi et al. Anesthetics, drugs that reduce sensation or, in the case of general anesthetics, awareness, help doctors minimize the pain and discomfort experienced by patients during surgeries or other procedures. Many anesthetics produce similar behavioral changes in different species, suggesting that they affect their brains similarly.