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PAIN CIRCUITRY

Anesthesia analgesia in the amygdala

General anesthetics during surgery are presumed to block pain by dampening brain activity and promoting loss-of-consciousness. A new study shows that anesthetics activate an endogenous analgesia neural ensemble in the central nucleus of the amygdala.

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Fig. 1: Anesthesia co-opts amygdalar analgesia ensembles.

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Correspondence to Gregory Corder.

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McCall, N.M., Wojick, J.A. & Corder, G. Anesthesia analgesia in the amygdala. Nat Neurosci 23, 783–785 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-0645-3

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