For decades, scientists have been working on unlocking the many mysteries behind anesthesia.
Dr. Hugh C. Hemmings Jr., chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine and senior associate dean for research, was recently featured in an in-depth article discussing the changes the body undergoes while under anesthesia.
The article on Vice’s health vertical called Tonic, mentions Dr. Hemming’s study with Dr. Karl Herold, senior research associate in Anesthesiology and Dr. Olaf Andersen, professor of physiology and biophysics, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which found that anesthesia induces unconsciousness by changing the function of proteins that reside on the surface of a thin membrane that forms a barrier around all cells.