GeneralAnesthesia

Anesthesia which renders the subject unconscious.

The way that it works is still somewhat mysterious.

Models

Transmission timing screwup

Anesthetics increase conduction velocity in myelinated fibers. Perhaps they disrupt the carefully calibrated timing of axonal transmission. This may selectively interfere with SpikeTimingBasedComputation?, while leaving RateBasedComputation? intact. If consciousness (or some general class of higher-order functions) is spike timing based, but lower-order functions are rate-based, this would explain why anesthetics selectively affect higher-order functions.

• Swindale ‘03: Neural Synchrony, Axonal Path Lengths, and General Anesthesia: A Hypothesis

Refs

• Swindale, Nicholas V. Neural Synchrony, Axonal Path Lengths, and General Anesthesia: A Hypothesis. Neuroscientist 2003 9: 440-445

CategoryMisc?