Anesthetic Drastically Diverts the Travels of Brain Waves
upstart writes:
Anesthetic drastically diverts the travels of brain waves:
Imagine the conscious brain as a sea roiling with the collisions and dispersals of waves of different sizes and shapes, swirling around and flowing across in many different directions. Now imagine that an ocean liner lumbers through, flattening everything that trails behind with its powerful, parting wake. A new study finds that unconsciousness induced by the commonly used drug propofol has something like that metaphorical effect on higher frequency brain waves, appearing to sweep them aside and, as an apparent consequence, sweeping consciousness away as well.
[...] Traveling waves are hypothesized to perform many important functions as they coordinate the activity of brain cells over the areas of the brain they cover. These include reading information out from memory and holding it there while it waits to be used in cognition. They may also aid in perception and act as a means of time keeping in the brain. The findings therefore illustrate how profoundly anesthesia alters the state of the state of the brain as it induces and maintains unconsciousness, said senior author Earl K. Miller, Picower Professor of Neuroscience in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
"The rhythms that we associate with higher cognition are drastically altered by propofol," Miller said. "The beta traveling waves seen during wakefulness are pushed aside, redirected by delta traveling waves that have been altered and made more powerful by the anesthetic. The deltas come through like a bull in a china shop."
Journal Reference:
Bhattacharya, Sayak, Donoghue, Jacob A., Mahnke, Meredith, et al. Propofol Anesthesia Alters Cortical Traveling Waves, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01856)
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