Title |
Bottom-Up and Top-Down Mechanisms of General Anesthetics Modulate Different Dimensions of Consciousness
|
---|---|
Published in |
Frontiers in Neural Circuits, June 2017
|
DOI | 10.3389/fncir.2017.00044 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
George A. Mashour, Anthony G. Hudetz |
Abstract |
There has been controversy regarding the precise mechanisms of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness, with two salient approaches that have emerged within systems neuroscience. One prominent approach is the "bottom up" paradigm, which argues that anesthetics suppress consciousness by modulating sleep-wake nuclei and neural circuits in the brainstem and diencephalon that have evolved to control arousal states. Another approach is the "top-down" paradigm, which argues that anesthetics suppress consciousness by modulating the cortical and thalamocortical circuits involved in the integration of neural information. In this article, we synthesize these approaches by mapping bottom-up and top-down mechanisms of general anesthetics to two distinct but inter-related dimensions of consciousness: level and content. We show how this explains certain empirical observations regarding the diversity of anesthetic drug effects. We conclude with a more nuanced discussion of how levels and contents of consciousness interact to generate subjective experience and what this implies for the mechanisms of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Finland | 1 | 17% |
Switzerland | 1 | 17% |
Japan | 1 | 17% |
United States | 1 | 17% |
Unknown | 2 | 33% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 5 | 83% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 17% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Unknown | 136 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 27 | 20% |
Researcher | 20 | 15% |
Student > Master | 13 | 10% |
Student > Bachelor | 9 | 7% |
Student > Postgraduate | 8 | 6% |
Other | 23 | 17% |
Unknown | 36 | 26% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Neuroscience | 32 | 24% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 25 | 18% |
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 10 | 7% |
Psychology | 9 | 7% |
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 3 | 2% |
Other | 15 | 11% |
Unknown | 42 | 31% |