ReviewFrontiers in neural circuits2018
Apical Function in Neocortical Pyramidal Cells: A Common Pathway by Which General Anesthetics Can Affect Mental State.
Review in Frontiers in neural circuits, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- The neuroscience of transformers.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2026Article
- Cellular and Microcircuit Mechanisms of Anesthetic Disruption of Conscious-State Organization.Cells · 2026Review
- Testing circuit-level theories of consciousness in humans.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2026Review
- Context-Sensitive Conscious Interpretation and Layer-5 Pyramidal Neurons in Multistable Perception.Brain and behavior · 2025Review
- Effects of ketamine and propofol on muscarinic plateau potentials in rat neocortical pyramidal cells.PloS one · 2025Article
- Cellular mechanisms of cooperative context-sensitive predictive inference.Current research in neurobiology · 2024Review
- A thalamocortical substrate for integrated information via critical synchronous bursting.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Neuronal connected burst cascades bridge macroscale adaptive signatures across arousal states.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Excitatory and inhibitory effects of HCN channel modulation on excitability of layer V pyramidal cells.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Pharmacological rescue of cognitive function in a mouse model of chemobrain.Molecular neurodegeneration · 2021Article
- The Phenomenology and Neurobiology of Visual Distortions and Hallucinations in Schizophrenia: An Update.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Review
- Apical amplification-a cellular mechanism of conscious perception?Neuroscience of consciousness · 2021Article
- Representational 'touch' and modulatory 'retouch'-two necessary neurobiological processes in thalamocortical interaction for conscious experience.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2021Review
- From non-conscious processing to conscious events: a minimalist approach.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2021Review
- Conscious Multisensory Integration: Introducing a Universal Contextual Field in Biological and Deep Artificial Neural Networks.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2020Article
- Commentary: Decoding across sensory modalities reveals common supramodal signatures of conscious perception.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
- The (Un)Conscious Mouse as a Model for Human Brain Functions: Key Principles of Anesthesia and Their Impact on Translational Neuroimaging.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2020Review
- A Computational Theory for the Emergence of Grammatical Categories in Cortical Dynamics.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2020Article
- Coupling the State and Contents of Consciousness.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2019Article
- How to Mitigate the Hard Problem by Adopting the Dual Theory of Phenomenal Consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It has been argued that general anesthetics suppress the level of consciousness, or the contents of consciousness, or both. The distinction between level and content is important because, in addition to clarifying the mechanisms of anesthesia, it may help clarify the neural bases of consciousness. We assess these arguments in the light of evidence that both the level and the content of consciousness depend upon the contribution of apical input to the information processing capabilities of neocortical pyramidal cells which selectively amplify relevant signals. We summarize research suggesting that what neocortical pyramidal cells transmit information about can be distinguished from levels of arousal controlled by sub-cortical nuclei and from levels of prioritization specified by interactions within the thalamocortical system. Put simply, on the basis of the observations reviewed, we hypothesize that when conscious we have particular, directly experienced, percepts, thoughts, feelings and intentions, and that general anesthetics affect consciousness by interfering with the subcellular processes by which particular activities are selectively amplified when relevant to the current context.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.