ReviewCurrent biology : CB2019
The Biology of General Anesthesia from Paramecium to Primate.
Review in Current biology : CB, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 73 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
73 citing papers in PubMed, 145 citations in OpenAlex.
- Comprehensive profiling of brain dynamics during anesthesia across phylogeny.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Conserved neural dynamics of anesthesia and the oblivion of species.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Anesthesia unconsciousness recruits dynamic parabrachial activity within a distributed brain-wide ensemble.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Synchronized Chromatin Reorganization as a Key Biomarker in Anesthetic Effects on Plants.Chemical & biomedical imaging · 2026Article
- Cellular and Microcircuit Mechanisms of Anesthetic Disruption of Conscious-State Organization.Cells · 2026Review
- State-dependent neuronal and network dynamics in the lateral hypothalamus across sevoflurane anesthesia-emergence revealed by microelectrode arrays.Microsystems & nanoengineering · 2026Article
- Subcortical recruitment dissociates isoflurane emergence from distinct wakeful states in mice.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Neuronal Dynamics During Isoflurane Induction inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Convergent transcriptomic and connectomic controllers of information integration and its anaesthetic breakdown across mammalian brains.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Targetable Effects of the Anesthetic, Ubiquinone-5, on Murine Cardiac Rhythm.FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · 2026Article
- Mind Everywhere: A Framework for Conceptualizing Goal-Directedness in Biology and Other Domains-Part One.Biological theory · 2026Article
- Neural Circuit Mechanisms of General Anaesthesia Induction: Current Advances and Future Directions.Current neuropharmacology · 2026Review
- Sevoflurane Inhibits Layer 5 Pyramidal Neurons via Kv1.2-Dependent Modulation of Subthreshold Currents.Journal of neurochemistry · 2026Article
- Article
- Convergent Control of NREM Sleep and Anesthesia by Prefrontal Layer 5 Extratelencephalic Neurons.Research square · 2025Article
- Transcranial direct current stimulation modulates primate brain dynamics across states of consciousness.eLife · 2025Article
- All Organisms Can Be Anesthetized, but There's No Point?BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Parafacial GABAergic neurone ablation induces behavioural resistance to volatile anaesthetic-induced hypnosis without reducing sleep.British journal of anaesthesia · 2025Article
- Activation of Glutamatergic Neurons in the Supramammillary Nucleus Promotes the Recovery of Consciousness under Sevoflurane Anesthesia.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- General anaesthesia decreases the uniqueness of brain functional connectivity across individuals and species.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
13 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
General anesthesia serves a critically important function in the clinical care of human patients. However, the anesthetized state has foundational implications for biology because anesthetic drugs are effective in organisms ranging from paramecia, to plants, to primates. Although unconsciousness is typically considered the cardinal feature of general anesthesia, this endpoint is only strictly applicable to a select subset of organisms that are susceptible to being anesthetized. We review the behavioral endpoints of general anesthetics across species and propose the isolation of an organism from its environment - both in terms of the afferent arm of sensation and the efferent arm of action - as a generalizable definition. We also consider the various targets and putative mechanisms of general anesthetics across biology and identify key substrates that are conserved, including cytoskeletal elements, ion channels, mitochondria, and functionally coupled electrical or neural activity. We conclude with a unifying framework related to network function and suggest that general anesthetics - from single cells to complex brains - create inefficiency and enhance modularity, leading to the dissociation of functions both within an organism and between the organism and its surroundings. Collectively, we demonstrate that general anesthesia is not restricted to the domain of modern medicine but has broad biological relevance with wide-ranging implications for a diverse array of species.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.