Anaesthesia and brain sensory processing: impact on neuronal responses in a female songbird
Abstract
Whether anesthesia impacts brain sensory processing is a highly debated and important issue. There is a general agreement that anesthesia tends to diminish neuronal activity, but its potential impact on neuronal "tuning" is still an open question. In the present study, based on electrophysiological recordings of neuronal activity in a large sample of female starlings' auditory neurons while broadcasting species specific song elements, we could show that 1) there could be atypical increased responses to non-biological sounds under anesthesia, and in any case different neuronal preferences between the anesthetized and awake state, 2) the neuronal preferences were not influenced by the animal's internal state (i.e. breeding status) contrarily to those of awake birds which show a high seasonal plasticity. These results demonstrate a clear impact of anesthesia on sensory and cognitive processes, by affecting neuronal preferences. They open new lines of thought on the interest of understanding the precise modalities of actions of these drugs on such profound modifications, but also on dissociating sensory basic processing from behaviorally relevant items, that require an increased vigilance.