Anesthetic agents conception

Much of the previous work has been conducted on animals, often studied under anesthesia, even though anesthetic agents can grossly distort thermoregulatory response. Moreover, there are marked differences in some of the basic modes of thermal compensation between animals and man—in an attempt to relieve an excessive heat load, for instance, some mammals including man sweat, whereas others such as the dog pant. Animal studies can be valuable in developing general concepts,... 

Both the inhaled and the intravenous anesthetics can depress spontaneous and evoked activity of neurons in many regions of the brain. Older concepts of the mechanism of anesthesia evoked nonspecific interactions of these agents with the lipid matrix of the nerve membrane (the so-called Meyer-Overton principle)—interactions that were thought to lead to secondary changes in ion flux. More recently, evidence has accumulated suggesting that the modification of ion currents by anesthetics results from more direct interactions with specific nerve membrane components. The ionic mechanisms involved for different anesthetics may vary, but at clinically relevant concentrations they appear to involve interactions with members of the ligand-gated ion channel family. 

---