Anesthesia sends neurons down the wrong path in unborn rat babies

A study provides new insight into why -- and when -- anesthesia during pregnancy harms unborn brains. Most research into prenatal exposure to anesthesia has focused killing brain cells, this rat study showed how anesthesia disrupts the 'precisely choreographed' migration neurons make in utero, and how not 'arriving at their proper and predetermined' locations can have profound impact on brain development.