“I just couldn't wake up.” It sounds like the classic excuse for arriving late to work. But anesthesiologist Max Kelz and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania have found evidence that our brains contain a stark barrier to changes in arousal states—from wakefulness to unconsciousness or back the other way. They dubbed this phenomenon “neural inertia.” Understanding this property of the brain might shed light on the distressing propensity of some people to wake too early from anesthesia.
Directing Attention
Via Machine
Kelz became interested in sleep neurobiology when a patient of his took eight hours to awaken after a standard anesthetic procedure. In 2008 he discovered that he could mimic his patient’s predicament in mice by impairing the signaling function of a neuropeptide hormone associated with wakefulness called orexin (also known as hypocretin). If waking and sleeping are not simply ...
