Differential Effect of Two Types of Anesthesia on Sound-Driven Oscillations in the Rat Primary Auditory Cortex

摘要

Neural oscillations are considered to reflect the activity of neural populations, and are thus closely associated with brain function. However, the extent to which different anesthetic agents exert unique effects on such oscillations is unclear. A mixture of three anesthetics (medetomidine, midazolam, and butor-phanol) was recently developed as an alternative to ketamine, which has potential addictive effects. Yet, little is known about the effects of this combination of anesthetics on neural oscillations. In this study, we used multi-channel electro-physiological recording and flavoprotein endogenous imaging to compare sound-driven oscillations in primary auditory cortical neurons after administration of ketamine vs. a medetomidine, midazolam, and butorphanol mixture. We observed differences in high gamma activities (over 120 Hz) between these two anesthetics, independent of cortical layers, but found no differences in activities including lower frequency components (<120 Hz). Our results provide new information about how specific anesthetics influence sound-driven neural oscillations.