General anesthetics do more than put you to sleep

A new understanding of the complex ways in which general anesthetics act on the brain could eventually lead to improved drugs for surgery. It remains unclear how general anesthesia works, even though it is one of the most common medical procedures worldwide. University of Queensland researcher, Associate Professor Bruno van Swinderen, said his team had overturned previous understanding of what general anaesthetics do to the brain, finding the drugs did much more than induce sleep.