Awake animal functional imaging to investigate the effects of general anesthesia on brain

General anesthesia has been performed reliably for nearly 170 years even though its exact mechanism is still unknown. To date, almost all small animal studies to investigate the effects of general anesthesia have been done under anesthesia and it prevents the quantitative analysis because of anesthesia itself effects the neurofunctional parameters under study. Here we have used an awake animal imaging method to study and compare cerebral glucose utilization in the awake and anesthetized states. We have shown that the general anesthesia has a profound effect on rat brain and it depends on the type and the dose of anesthetic drug.