Why don’t we dream under general anesthesia?
In: Biology
Anesthesiologist here. The medications we give to our patients for genral anesthesia achieve three effects:
1. They have strong pain killing effect “Analgesia”. So even if the patient becomes aware accidentaly, they won’t feel the pain.
2. They cause memory loss “Amnesia”. If the patient became aware, he won’t remember this part later on.
3. They make people sleep “Sedation”. However the artificial sleep is different compared to natural sleep in that it turns your brain off almost completely. Most of general anesthesia medications are used to stop strong epileptic fits since they can stop all electrical activity in the brain.
So why we don’t dream under general anesthesia? We received medications that stopped our brain. Even if there’s a part that still active, there’s no sensory input that trigger a dream “remember the pain killer part” and even if after all this you dream, you won’t remember anything after you’re awake “amnesia”.
Anesthesiologists almost always talk about general anesthesia as ‘going to sleep’, but that’s just a metaphor. It’s not like going to sleep at all. We don’t know exactly how anesthesia works, but it is much more like turning off your brain. Your brain basically becomes unable to communicate with itself. So, you can’t have *any* complex thoughts, including dreams. (There is some brain activity, so your brain is not fully off, but it is very reduced in function)
If being awake is you being at your job, being asleep is your time away from your job. A lot of the time, it’s not getting to kick back and relax, it’s taking care of all the other responsibilities that you can’t address while you’re busy working. Dreaming is one of those side responsibilities.
Anesthesia is like, from the perspective of taking care of your responsibilities, going to sleep. You’re not able to really get anything done during that time, including dreaming.
When you are asleep your brain is just as active as when you’re awake. If you take a drug then the activity stops.
I did dream, although it was 15 years back, I still have glimpses of the dream. Now reading at the comments I think it was probably when the anesthesia was fading off.
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