Penn study sheds light on how the brain shifts between sleep/awake states under anaesthesia
Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 15:14
in Health & Medicine
Despite the fact that an estimated 25 million patients per year in the U.S. undergo surgeries using general anaesthesia, scientists have only been able to hypothesise exactly how anaesthetics interact with the central nervous system. They previously thought that the processes of 'going under' and waking up from anaesthesia affected the brain in the same way. Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have established in animal models that the brain comes in and out of a state of induced unconsciousness through different processes. The findings, published in PLoS One, may help researchers better understand serious sleep disorders and states of impaired consciousness such as comas...
