Wiegert and his team recorded brain activity from the hippocampus while mice were anesthetized using one of three common combinations of general anesthetics: isoflurane, ketamine/xylazine (Keta/Xyl), and medetomidine/midazolam/fentanyl (MMF). Understanding how different anesthetics affect the brain, particularly the hippocampus, is therefore important for both clinicians with human patients and experimental scientists who work with animals. Consequently, their effects on memory formation also differ. But a new study publishing on April 1st 2021 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, led by Simon Wiegert at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, shows that changes in the hippocampus-the part of the brain used to make new memories-differ depending on which general anesthetic is used. Memory loss is common after general anesthesia, particularly for events occurring immediately before surgery-a phenomenon called retrograde amnesia. Neurons with correlated activity are connected by black lines. Colors indicate the respective anesthetics. The four panels in the lower part show two-dimensional maps of active neurons in the same hippocampal region during wakefulness (top left) and under the different anesthetics indicated above. A mouse brain section highlighting the hippocampus is overlaid with the molecular structures of the anesthetics isoflurane (purple), medetomidine/midazolam/fentanyl (orange), and ketamine/xylazine (red).
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