General Anesthesia: A Probe to Explore Consciousness
Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience August 14, 2019 Vincent Bonhomme, Cécile Staquet, Javier Montupil et al. 109 citations
General anesthesia reversibly alters consciousness without globally shutting down the brain. Depending on the agent and dose, it can produce a complete absence of subjective experience (unconsciousness), a conscious experience without environmental perception (disconnected consciousness, like during dreaming), or oriented consciousness with environmental awareness (connected consciousness). Each state may be followed by explicit or implicit memories. Progress in brain function exploration has improved understanding of neural correlates of consciousness and their alterations during anesthesia, including changes in functional and effective brain connectivity, consciousness network topology, and spatio-temporal dynamics.