Anesthesia found to block sensation by cutting off communication within the cortex

General anesthesia evokes a dual mystery: How does it disrupt consciousness, including sensory perception, and what might that say about the nature of consciousness? A new study led by researchers at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT provides evidence in animals that consciousness depends on properly synchronized communication across the brain’s cortex and that the anesthetic drug Propofol cancels sensory processing by cutting it off.