I’ve only been put under general anesthesia once in my life, and ever since I’ve wondered what exactly happened to me during those lost hours. It turns out nobody really knows. But if they ever find out, they may get a little closer to solving the riddle of consciousness. That’s the subject of my newest brain column for Discover. Check it out.
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Carl Zimmer writes about science regularly for the New York Times and magazines such as Discover, where he is a contributing editor and columnist.
He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which is The Tangled Bank: An Introduction To Evolution. His website is carlzimmer.com and his address is [ blog at carlzimmer dot com ].
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March 17th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Consciousness is a big subject.
A few years ago I was anesthetized for more than 8 hours. Waking was very different from waking from sleep. I felt that no time had passed — perhaps due to anesthesia + cooling my blood. It was a strange and wonderful feeling (ecstatic that I was out of surgery).
The perceived jump in time was eerie. Recently I’ve been reading John Locke and his concept of identity. Extrapolating from Locke, the sense of personal identity involves, in part, creating a story of your life which is continuous in space and time. No discontinuities. Anesthesia felt like a discontinuity.
A second really weird thing about waking from surgery. I heard the people in recovery discussing when to take the breathing tube out. They decided on 10 minutes. My mind felt alert, my throat hurt, and I wanted the tube out. When it came out, they watched as I tried to breathe on my own. Although my breath was shallow, I could do it. But then a sudden fear: breathing took extreme focus and conscious attention. I didn’t have it in me. I wanted to relax and rest, not work and breathe. Fortunately, the effort needed to breathe didn’t last long and I was soon breathing automatically.
Anesthesia is a weird thing.
March 17th, 2009 at 3:42 am
Thanks, Johnk for your experience; pretty interesting.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:59 am
I agree about the oddness. I was recently “put under” for about 45 minutes. Coming out of it was not anything like waking up after sleep.
I’m one of those who have a pretty good internal clock. If I need to wake up early, I normally do so shortly before the alarm goes off. And if I wake up in the night, I most often have a pretty good sense of the time even before I check the clock.
Coming out of anesthesia was very different. I had no sense of whether any time had passed or not. If I’d been told that the operation had been postponed and I’d only been out for 30 seconds, I would have accepted it without hesitation.
It did indeed seem like a discontinuity.
March 17th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I’ve gone under 3 times in my life. Twice for leg surgery, once for the removal of some impacted molars. It really was an experience. Placing the mask over my nose and ask me to count backwards from ten. I got to eight before I blacked out. When I woke up again I was clear headed and pain free, of course they told me that when the anesthesia wore off it’d be a different story. Perhaps some lingering jumble in my brain prevented the pain signals from reaching me, but it was a very strange experience.
The real horror stories come from people who don’t react normally to it, who are paralyzed completely but aware of their surroundings and can continue to feel pain. So when they go under the knife its incredibly traumatic. Doesn’t happen very frequently at all but it does happen from what I understand. Really interesting.
March 17th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
The thought of being drugged unconcious while some wacko messes around with knifes on some of your organs makes me sick!
March 17th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
My theory on anesthesia is that you are always conscious and able to feel pain during the surgery, but the drug messes with your brain and makes you tell other people that you were unconscious, and also prevents you from objecting if ever you need another surgery.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Very interesting article, Carl! What intrigues me is that you, in a completely different way, reach a conclusion similar to that of a recent study published in PLoS biology: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.1000061&ct=1#toclink4
It’s reviewed here: http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/03/igniting_the_flame_of_consciousness.php and here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16775-consciousness-signature-discovered-spanning-the-brain.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
March 18th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
@Scott Belyea:
I’m curious, did the anesthesia mess with your circadian rythms? In other words, can an extended bout under anesthetics cause jetlag? Or do our circadian clocks march on, but are just cut off from the rest of the brain as those highways are shut down during anesthesia?
March 26th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
My recent brush with anesthesia last month nearly killed me. Thus, I hope to avoid it for as long as possible.
March 31st, 2009 at 12:44 am
I have been reading everyone’s responses and they are quite in contrast to my experience. I was under anesthesia for 2 hours. And acutely aware of the time. What’s odd is I heard murmurings about what to cut and blah blah. I can’t figure out though whether I actually was hearing what happened. Or if I was dreaming it because I had been thinking about the surgery so much.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:05 am
i was on general anesthesia 2 weekends ago. with the mask on, i can still remember gradually losing consciousness and got to blink only once before i totally passed out. it was 7am
then suddenly i was awake and feared that they will start the procedure with me still conscious! despite the drugged state i started to think of something to tell them that i was awake, that’s when i did the ‘what time is it’ gesture with my both hands. then i heard a voice “it’s 9am. the operation’s finished”.
time did not pass. no dreams. weird