A Comparison of Brain-State Dynamics across Common Anesthetic Agents in Male Sprague-Dawley Rats

Anesthesia is a powerful tool in neuroscientific research, especially in sleep research where it has the experimental advantage of allowing surgical interventions that are ethically problematic in natural sleep. Yet, while it is well documented that different anesthetic agents produce a variety of b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of molecular sciences 2022-03, Vol.23 (7), p.3608
Main Authors: Ward-Flanagan, Rachel, Lo, Alto S, Clement, Elizabeth A, Dickson, Clayton T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alternations
Anesthesia
Anesthetics
Anesthetics - pharmacology
Animal models
Animals
Bandwidths
Brain research
Chloral
Chloral hydrate
Coma
Drug dosages
Drug withdrawal
Forebrain
Isoflurane
Ketamine
ketamine-xylazine
Male
Metabolism
Pentobarbital
Pharmacology
Power
Propofol
Prosencephalon
Rats
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
Respiration
Rodents
Sleep
urethane
Xylazine
Xylazine - pharmacology
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Summary:Anesthesia is a powerful tool in neuroscientific research, especially in sleep research where it has the experimental advantage of allowing surgical interventions that are ethically problematic in natural sleep. Yet, while it is well documented that different anesthetic agents produce a variety of brain states, and consequently have differential effects on a multitude of neurophysiological factors, these outcomes vary based on dosages, the animal species used, and the pharmacological mechanisms specific to each anesthetic agent. Thus, our aim was to conduct a controlled comparison of spontaneous electrophysiological dynamics at a surgical plane of anesthesia under six common research anesthetics using a ubiquitous animal model, the Sprague-Dawley rat. From this direct comparison, we also evaluated which anesthetic agents may serve as pharmacological proxies for the electrophysiological features and dynamics of unconscious states such as sleep and coma. We found that at a surgical plane, pentobarbital, isoflurane and propofol all produced a continuous pattern of burst-suppression activity, which is a neurophysiological state characteristically observed during coma. In contrast, ketamine-xylazine produced synchronized, slow-oscillatory activity, similar to that observed during slow-wave sleep. Notably, both urethane and chloral hydrate produced the spontaneous, cyclical alternations between forebrain activation (REM-like) and deactivation (non-REM-like) that are similar to those observed during natural sleep. Thus, choice of anesthesia, in conjunction with continuous brain state monitoring, are critical considerations in order to avoid brain-state confounds when conducting neurophysiological experiments.
ISSN:1422-0067
1661-6596
1422-0067
DOI:10.3390/ijms23073608