LAUSR

Significance Although anesthetic drugs are known to lower arousal, it is unclear how anesthesia impacts perceptual and cognitive processing. Diminished arousal has been associated with prominent brain oscillations such as the slow wave, but functional roles for other anesthesia-induced rhythmic changes have not been proposed. During waking states, brain oscillations are understood to be involved in a variety of sensory and cognitive processes mediated by circuits connecting posterior or prefrontal cortices with the thalamus. This study shows that propofol disrupts alpha oscillations (~10 cycles/s) in posterior circuits that mediate sensory processing and induces an alpha oscillation in prefrontal cognitive circuits that normally operate at higher frequencies.