Stem cell-derived brain models offer a new window into how anesthesia works
Every day, hundreds of thousands of people undergo general anesthesia, trusting they'll drift into unconsciousness and wake safely after surgery. Yet despite decades of use, scientists still don't fully understand how anesthetic drugs reshape the brain's electrical activity to produce unconsciousness.
Researchers from UCLA have developed human stem cell-derived brain assembloids that mimic the electrical changes observed during general anesthesia. These brain assembloids, which recreate simplified human brain circuits, are able to reproduce the electrical changes seen during anesthesia, according to a study published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia.
Scientists have long understood that anesthetic drugs like propofol bind to specific receptors on neurons and alter the brain's electrical activity on a large scale. However, there has been a lack of a human model that connects these two scales, making it difficult to study the brain's response to anesthesia. Brain assembloids, created from induced pluripotent stem cells and containing three types of brain cells, offer a solution to this challenge.
These models exhibit the broad, slow brain waves and individual neuron quieting that characterize anesthesia, despite the fact that they lack certain brain structures like the thalamus. This research opens up new possibilities for studying anesthesia and other neurological disorders, as well as screening candidate drugs and understanding why patients respond differently to anesthesia.
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