Emery N. Brown, M.D., Ph.D., Ralph Lydic, Ph.D., and Nicholas D. Schiff, M.D. N Engl J Med 2010; 363:2638-2650, December 30, 2010
In the United States, nearly 60,000 patients per day receive general anesthesia for surgery.1 General anesthesia is a drug-induced, reversible condition that includes specific behavioral and physiological traits — unconsciousness, amnesia, analgesia, and akinesia — with concomitant stability of the autonomic, cardiovascular, respiratory, and thermoregulatory systems.2 General anesthesia produces distinct patterns on the electroencephalogram (EEG), the most common of which is a progressive increase in low-frequency, high-amplitude activity as the level of general anesthesia deepens3,4 (Figure 1). How anesthetic drugs induce and maintain the behavioral states of general anesthesia is an important question in medicine and neuroscience.6 Substantial insights . . .
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