Why do we not feel pain under general anesthesia? Is it the same for regular sleep?

Question

I’m curious what mechanism is at work here.

Edit: Thanks for the responses. I get it now. Obviously I am still enjoying the discussion RE: the finer points like memory, etc.

In: Biology

Answer 1

Technically, we don’t REALLY know how anesthesia works.

Generally, it works by inhibiting activity in the central nervous system, because the drugs target specific receptors in the brain that reduces neural activity and receptiveness to pain. That’s the quick and dirty version. The thing is that we don’t know exactly WHY. There is a general idea and hypothesis about it, but we don’t truly know all the mechanics at work and why it works that way. We know what the drugs do and the effects on the body, but we don’t know the exact mechanisms that causes the anesthetic drugs to have that effect.