Anesthetics and Consciousness

So lots of people have been asking me what exactly it is that I am studying at MIT and what my research is like on a daily basis. I've decided to answer these questions on our blog so that anybody can read about what it is that I do.

The greater question that I would like to answer is: What is consciousness? Now this question can be easily answered from a theological perspective by saying the our spirit or soul is our consciousness. I believe that God created our spirits (i.e. our consciousness) but there is an obvious correlation between mental capacity and the degree to which our nervous system is correctly functioning; malfunctioning on the level of the nervous system can have drastic effects on a persons behavior and personality and these effects can be well beyond the realm of free will or choice. If a person's brain is not operating correctly they can't just think their way out of the problem (I love the movie A Beautiful Mind but it is very unrealistic).

Take for instance a child that is born with severe neurological malformations, these children will never achieve the same level of neural development that they could had they been born with a fully functional brain. A second great example is that of Phineas Gage. (For those of you who don't know Phineas' story you can read it on Wikipedia or a simple Google search will yield lots of information about him.) Phineas' life was greatly changed by his accident. He went from being one of the shining stars of the community to a vagabond and a hermit. I am a firm believer that the behavioral problems Phineas faced were not things that he could use volition or self control to overcome.

This is why I am studying the brain. I want to better understand how our brains work and how they give rise to what we call consciousness. To do this I have chosen to use anesthetics. Anesthetics are most widely known for their ability to render a person unconscious and block pain. They actually do several things.

• -They block sensation (pain, touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing)
  
• -They induce a level of muscular paralysis
• -They block the formation of memory
• -They (for the most part) preserve some level of autonomic function (the heart still beats, some level of breathing is maintained, the gut still functions, etc...)
• -They interfere with consciousness, and can render a person unconscious
  

My goal is to use anesthetics to inhibit consciousness and by using advanced neurological recording techniques I will record the brain activity from various brain regions during the administration of anesthetics. Hopefully if we are able to record from the correct brain regions and set up our experiments in the correct way we will learn more about the brain creates a consciousness.