Baylor researchers found that brains under general anaesthesia can still process language, spot patterns and predict words, suggesting unconscious minds are more capable than thought.
01Summary
- 01Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine published the findings in Nature after studying patients having epilepsy surgery under general anaesthesia.
- 02Using Neuropixels probes, they recorded electrical activity from hundreds of neurons in the hippocampus, a region involved in learning and memory.
- 03The patients’ hippocampal neurons responded to odd sounds differently and became better at distinguishing them over time.
- 04During short stories, brain activity contained information about nouns, verbs and adjectives, and could help predict which words would come next.
02Why it matters
The study challenges the idea that the anaesthetised brain is largely switched off and may change how scientists understand consciousness. It could also help future work on communication technologies for people with neurological injuries.
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