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

I had surgery recently and there were actually two parts to the anaesthetic.

One was a nerve block that the anaesthetist directly injected into the nerves. This effectively paralysed my arm so I both lost feeling in it and any ability to move it for about 12 or so hours.

The other part was the general anaesthetic that knocked me out for the two or so hours the surgery took.