will take place on Tuesday, July 9, 2019 from 15:00 to 16:00 hours in CBBM Building, Ground Floor, Seminar Room B1/B2.
Host: Prof. Dr. Jonas Obleser
Institute of Psychology I
University of Lübeck
Abstract
Many sensory neuroscience studies rely on general anesthesia in order to study fundamental cortical sensory processing and interactions in-vivo. However, general anesthesia is not a uniform state of the brain. Ongoing activity differs between light and deep anesthesia and cortical response properties are modulated by anesthetic dosage. When examining sensory activity during rising isoflurane anesthesia level, it is possible to show that anesthesia level affects cross-modal interactions in the visual cortex and the subcortical subiculum. Specifically, auditory activity can be suddenly elicited in the visual cortex after a transition during increasing anesthesia level. At the same time, auditory and visual evoked activity occurs in the subiculum, even though the subiculum is normally unresponsive to sensory stimulation. These results show that pseudo-heteromodal sensory responses can appear in brain structures as an effect of an anesthesia induced state change. Although these phenomena provide important insights into the general mechanisms of anesthetics, they also emphasize the importance to pay attention to the anesthesia level in sensory in-vivo studies carried out under anesthesia.
