The Dynamics of the Unconscious Brain Under General Anesthesia

Emery Brown, Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard, describes how general anesthesia induced by drugs such as Propofol alters neural oscillations in the brain, as measured with EEG. He presents a model of the neural circuitry underlying the impact of anesthesia on neural signals, and shows how these changes vary with age. Understanding this process may lead to clinical methods for actively restoring brain function after anesthesia that may speed recovery and reduce cognitive dysfunction.

Resources:

Emery Brown’s website: Neuroscience Statistics Research Laboratory - http://www.neurostat.mit.edu
Brown, E. N., Purdon, P. L., Van Dort, C. J. (2011) General anesthesia and altered states of arousal: A systems neuroscience analysis, Annual Review of Neuroscience 34:601-628. - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Brown E. N., Purdon P. L. (2013) The aging brain and anesthesia, Current Opinion in Anesthesiology 26:414-419. - https://journals.lww.com/co-anesthesi...
Purdon P. L., Pierce E. T., Mukamel E. A., Prerau M. J., Walsh J. L., Wong K. F., Salazar-Gomez A. F., Harrell P. G., Sampson A. L., Cimenser A., Ching S., Kopell N. J., Tavares-Stoeckel C., Habeeb K., Merhar R., Brown E. N. (2013) Electroencephalogram signatures of loss and recovery of consciousness from propofol, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110:E1142-51. - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...