general anesthetics produce their effects is unclear.Beyond being a medical quandary that could lead to the design of better anesthetics, the mechanism of anesthesia may be related to how we sleep, the nature of consciousness, and conditions related to these states.The first successful demonstration of an anesthetic to generate a loss of consciousness was in 1846 at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.Researchers later noted that the potency of anesthetics is related to their solubility in lipids, which are present in the membranes of cells in the body.
This led to the “lipid hypothesis” of general anesthetic action, but precisely how changes in membrane lipids generate unconsciousness has remained a mystery.In a recent study in.
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