fuckyeahneuroscience:

Mapping how our neural circuits change under the influence of anesthesia could shed light on one of neuroscience’s most perplexing riddles: consciousness.

As an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Brown is constant witness to one of the most profound and mysterious feats of modern medicine. Every day, nearly 60,000 patients in the United States undergo general anesthesia, enabling them to survive even the grisliest operations unaware and free of pain.

But though doctors have been putting people under for more than 150 years, what happens in the brain during general anesthesia is a mystery. Scientists don’t know much about the extent to which these drugs tap into the same brain circuitry we use when we sleep, or how being anesthetized differs from other ways of losing consciousness, such as slipping into a coma following an injury. Are parts of the brain truly shutting off, or do they simply stop communicating with each other? How is being anesthetized different from a state of hypnosis or deep meditation? And what happens in the brain in the transition between consciousness and unconsciousness? “We know we can get you in and out of this safely,” Brown says, “but we still can’t quite tell you how it works.”

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Neuroscience has often benefited from natural experiments—patients who lose their ability to remember, produce language, or regulate their emotions after parts of their brains are damaged or have to be surgically removed. Anesthesiologists preside over an analogous experiment every day: they watch elements of consciousness disappear. Under general anesthesia, for instance, patients lose pain perception, awareness, memory, and the ability to move. An anesthesiologist can influence each of these changes in different ways by varying the dosages and types of drugs used.

“By taking away different functions that we associate with consciousness,” Brown says, “we might be able to start piecing together parts of the jigsaw puzzle.” Neuroscientists could begin to do for consciousness what they have done with memory and language.

Fascinating. Reason number [BIG GIGANTIC NUMBER] why I love science and medicine.