During recovery from anesthesia, brain activity switches abruptly between a small set of discrete states. Surprisingly, this switching also occurs under constant doses of anesthesia, even in the absence of stimuli. These metastable states and the transitions between them are thought to form a "scaffold" that ultimately guides the brain back to wakefulness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMechanisms through which anesthetics disrupt neuronal activity are incompletely understood. In order to study anesthetic mechanisms in the intact brain, tight control over anesthetic pharmacology in a genetically and neurophysiologically accessible animal model is essential. Here, we developed a pharmacokinetic model that quantitatively describes propofol distribution into and elimination out of the brain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is the leading cause of poisoning mortality and morbidity in the USA. Carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) levels are not predictive of severity or prognosis. At this time, the measurement of mitochondrial respiration may serve as a biomarker in CO poisoning.
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