Study suggests approach to waking patients after surgery
However, some patients can take a considerable amount of time to wake up, holding up the use of expensive operating rooms and occupying medical staff who must keep them under close observation. Now researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have moved a step closer to a treatment to rapidly awaken patients after administration of a general anesthetic, following a study of the mechanism that allows people to regain consciousness. In a paper published in the journal PNAS , the researchers demonstrate that activating dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain causes active emergence from general anesthesia. This is important because the mechanism by which we regain consciousness following general anesthetic has so far been poorly understood, according to Ken Solt, a research affiliate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. He led the research alongside Emery Brown, ...