In the study titled “Anesthesia Alters Complexity of Spontaneous and Stimulus-Related Brain Activity,” published in Neuroscience by Duan Li and Anthony G. Hudetz at University of Michigan, researchers examined how general anesthesia affects the complexity of both spontaneous and stimulus-evoked brain activity. They used sixty-four channel 8-shank NeuroNexus multi-electrode arrays to record extracellular neuronal activity – implanting them in the primary visual cortex of rats, allowing for simultaneous recording of multiple neurons across different cortical layers.
By analyzing the recorded data, the researchers assessed changes in the complexity of both spontaneous and stimulus-evoked neuronal firing patterns under various depths of anesthesia. This approach provided insights into how anesthesia modulates neural complexity and information processing in the brain.
