ABOVE: A mouse brain section highlighting the hippocampus (green) is overlaid with the molecular structures of the anesthetics isoflurane (purple), medetomidine/midazolam/fentanyl (orange), and ketamine/xylazine (red).
SIMON WIEGERT
After general anesthesia, a common problem that shows up in older adults is cognitive deficits, particularly memory loss, but it’s not clear why or how they happen. In a study published today (April 1) in PLOS Biology, researchers have taken a step toward understanding how anesthetic drugs affect the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory formation and storage. They tested three anesthesia treatments in mice and determined that isoflurane, an inhaled anesthetic commonly used by itself in animal studies and sometimes in combination with other drugs in people, was the least disruptive to hippocampal neurons and didn’t affect memory formation and consolidation.
The authors “not only looked at the onset of the effects and the changes during the acute phase of anesthesia, but ...
