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 just saw a video on this! Hopefully it was correct, someone can explain better than me for sure. But basically the anesthesia puts you in an unconscious state where the pain signals aren’t being received and processed. So basically, your body and nerves still “feel” everything, but the signal to the brain is blocked so you don’t experience it