Cross-Species Analysis Links Anesthesia to Local Neural Isolation

A comparative study of multiscale neural recordings found a broadly shared profile of brain activity during anesthesia in humans, macaques, marmosets, mice, zebrafish and nematodes. Across the six species, anesthesia was associated with shorter intrinsic timescales of local neural activity and dampened inter-regional synchrony, a pattern the researchers characterized as spatiotemporal isolation of local activity.

The researchers compiled neural-activity data recorded during wakefulness and anesthesia, then applied massive feature extraction to more than 6,000 time-series features. This approach enabled them to compare local neural dynamics across species and scales. The resulting conserved profile suggests that different anesthetics may produce similar changes in how neural activity is organized over time and how activity is coordinated between brain regions, although the study does not establish that all anesthetic agents or experimental conditions are equivalent.

Deep-brain stimulation of the macaque centromedian thalamus reversed the anesthesia-associated dynamical profile and restored behavioral responsiveness. This intervention experiment provides causal evidence in macaques that modifying activity in a deep-brain region can shift measured neural dynamics away from the anesthetized state. The result was demonstrated in a primate model, so it does not show that the same stimulation protocol would reverse anesthesia in humans.

The conserved dynamical profile also covaries with conserved transcriptional profiles of excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission. The authors used biophysical modeling to explore a possible mechanistic connection between the macroscale changes observed during anesthesia and the microscale effects of key molecular targets on the timescales of synaptic excitation and inhibition. The modeling identifies a potential explanatory link rather than proving a single molecular cause. Together, the cross-species recordings, macaque stimulation experiment and models support a shared neural endpoint of anesthesia: reduced coordination between neural regions accompanied by faster, more locally isolated neural dynamics.

Subject of Research: Cross-species analysis of multiscale brain dynamics during anesthesia.

Article Title: Comprehensive profiling of brain dynamics during anesthesia across phylogeny

Article References: Luppi, A. I., Uhrig, L., Tasserie, J., Shafiei, G., Légaré, A., Muta, K., Hata, J., Okano, H., Golkowski, D., Ranft, A., Ilg, R., Jordan, D., Gini, S., Liu, Z.-Q., Yee, Y., Castro, P., Signorelli, C. M., Cofre, R., Destexhe, A., … Misic, B. (2026). Comprehensive profiling of brain dynamics during anesthesia across phylogeny. Nature Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02460-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-026-02460-4

Keywords: anesthesia, brain dynamics, neural synchrony, intrinsic timescales, cross-species comparison, macaque, thalamic stimulation, neuroscience, biophysical modeling, neural isolation, Comprehensive, profiling