ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

Anesthesia: Another Side of Consciousness 153
we were when President Kennedy was shot. Similarly, threatening or derrogatory
remarks are more likely to be heard and consolidated to long-term memory and
recall in partially anesthetized patients (Bitnar, 1983). Amnesia (lack of recall)
results from prevention of memory consolidation at any point from input to longterm
memory storage. Anesthetic drugs can act at various stages of this process:
narcotic painkillers prevent noxious input, amnestic tranquilizers block
consolidation to long term memory, the general anesthetics inhibit these and all
other cognitive functions. The consolidation process appears to occur in the
brain’s hippocampal region but memory storage and awareness are more diffusely
distributed.
7.3 Mechanisms of Anesthesia
A variety of quite different molecular structures have anesthetic activity.
Other molecules, quite similar in structure to anesthetics, may have opposite
effects and cause convulsions. Despite these paradoxes, imaginative attempts
have been presented to unify a single mechanism for anesthesia and represent
clues to the mechanism of consciousness.
Figure 7.5: Anesthesia results from prevention of protein switching between two
or more different conformational states induced by binding of ligand, calcium ion,
or voltage change. Anesthetic gas molecules bind by Van der Waals forces within
hydrophobic pockets within which electron dipole oscillations may be a trigger, or
switching mechanism for protein conformation.
Several neural functions and structures are inhibited by anesthetics, although
some are inhibited at concentrations higher than that required for anesthesia.
Propagation of action potentials resulting in nerve conduction as well as
microtubule dependent axoplasmic transport are blocked by anesthetics such as
halothane, which also causes depolymerization of MT. However, the measurable
neural function which is sensitive to anesthetics at concentrations barely sufficient
to erase consciousness is synaptic transmission. Neurotransmitter release and/or
neurotransmitter receptor activation thus appear to be the specific actions whose
inhibition results in anesthesia. Inhibition of collective communicative activities
within the cytoskeleton and attached membrane proteins related to synaptic
transmission are presently undetectable with current technologies and their
inhibition may still account for anesthesia. Anatomical localization of sites of
anesthetic action has focused on regions with many synapses. Accordingly, the
reticular activating system which is involved with regulation of wakefulness and
attention and is “polysynaptic” was originally viewed as a major site of anesthetic