Anesthesia produces shared neural activity patterns across six species
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.
Researchers at the University of Oxford and McGill University, alongside institutions worldwide, have discovered that anesthesia produces a consistent pattern of neural activity across six different species, including humans, macaques, marmosets, mice, zebrafish, and roundworms. Published in Nature Neuroscience, the study suggests that despite the vast evolutionary differences between these organisms, anesthesia affects their brains in a similar way.
The neural activity patterns observed during anesthesia included shorter-lasting local fluctuations and reduced coordination between different regions of the nervous system. This finding challenges previous assumptions that anesthetic effects vary significantly across species. The researchers analyzed neural activity recordings from all six species using functional MRI for mammals and calcium imaging for fish and worms.
By comparing these recordings and employing computer simulations, they identified commonalities in the neural activity patterns induced by anesthesia across species. For instance, in macaques, electrical stimulation of the centromedian thalamus, a brain region involved in alertness and responsiveness, could reverse the anesthesia-induced pattern and restore behavioral responsiveness.
The study's findings provide valuable insights into the universal effects of anesthesia and could help improve the translation of animal research to human treatments.
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