Millions of people are administered general anesthesia each year in the United States alone, but it's not always easy to tell whether they are actually.
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MADISON, Wis. Millions of people are administered general anesthesia each year in the United States alone, but it s not always easy to tell whether they are actually unconscious.
A small proportion of those patients regain some awareness during medical procedures, but a new study of the brain activity that represents consciousness could prevent that potential trauma. It may also help both people in comas and scientists struggling to define which parts of the brain can claim to be key to the conscious mind. What has been shown for 100 years in an unconscious state like sleep are these slow waves of electrical activity in the brain, says Yuri Saalmann, a University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology and neuroscience professor. But those may not be the right signals to tap into. Under a number of conditions with different anesthetic drugs, in people that are suffering from a coma or with brain damage or other clinical situations there can be high-frequency activity as
DAVID WAHLBERG
Using stem cells from monkeys with a condition like Parkinsonâs disease, UW-Madison researchers grew brain cells that produce a chemical depleted by the disease. When they injected the cells into the monkeysâ brains, the animalsâ Parkinsonâs-like rigid movements were replaced by more fluid walking and climbing. LOGAN WROGE, STATE JOURNAL
The results are promising enough that the researchers hope to begin work on applications for human patients soon, said UWâMadison neuroscientist Su-Chun Zhang, whose Waisman Center lab grew the brain cells.
âThis result in primates is extremely powerful, particularly for translating our discoveries to the clinic,â Zhang, senior author of the study published this month in the journal Nature Medicine, said in a statement.
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