Title |
Explaining general anesthesia: A two‐step hypothesis linking sleep circuits and the synaptic release machinery
|
---|---|
Published in |
BioEssays, January 2014
|
DOI | 10.1002/bies.201300154 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Bruno van Swinderen, Benjamin Kottler |
Abstract |
Several general anesthetics produce their sedative effect by activating endogenous sleep pathways. We propose that general anesthesia is a two-step process targeting sleep circuits at low doses, and synaptic release mechanisms across the entire brain at the higher doses required for surgery. Our hypothesis synthesizes data from a variety of model systems, some which require sleep (e.g. rodents and adult flies) and others that probably do not sleep (e.g. adult nematodes and cultured cell lines). Non-sleeping systems can be made insensitive (or hypersensitive) to some anesthetics by modifying a single pre-synaptic protein, syntaxin1A. This suggests that the synaptic release machinery, centered on the highly conserved SNARE complex, is an important target of general anesthetics in all animals. A careful consideration of SNARE architecture uncovers a potential mechanism for general anesthesia, which may be the primary target in animals that do not sleep, but a secondary target in animals that sleep. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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Mexico | 1 | 33% |
Unknown | 2 | 67% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
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Members of the public | 3 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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France | 1 | 2% |
Belgium | 1 | 2% |
Canada | 1 | 2% |
Unknown | 39 | 93% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
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Researcher | 10 | 24% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 7 | 17% |
Student > Bachelor | 5 | 12% |
Student > Postgraduate | 4 | 10% |
Professor > Associate Professor | 4 | 10% |
Other | 6 | 14% |
Unknown | 6 | 14% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Neuroscience | 15 | 36% |
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 8 | 19% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 6 | 14% |
Psychology | 3 | 7% |
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 1 | 2% |
Other | 4 | 10% |
Unknown | 5 | 12% |