| Autor: |
George A. Mashour, Anthony G. Hudetz |
| Jazyk: |
angličtina |
| Rok vydání: |
2017 |
| Předmět: |
|
| Zdroj: |
Frontiers in Neural Circuits, Vol 11 (2017) |
| Druh dokumentu: |
article |
| ISSN: |
1662-5110 |
| DOI: |
10.3389/fncir.2017.00044 |
| Popis: |
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. |
| Databáze: |
Directory of Open Access Journals |
| Externí odkaz: |
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