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”.
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