[keermie]

Folks,
We had a lecture over the reticular activating system in anatomy today, and the instructor had mentioned that a lesion of the reticular activating system in the pons of mice inhibits their ability to "sleep." The question then posed was, "are these mice able to be anesthetized?" Our instructor did not have an answer outside of his area of expertise. I am sure as we learn more about the RAS outside of our anatomy class that the answer will become more evident; however, I was wondering if anyone could take a poke at it because this is fascinating to me.

[nilepoc]

As I am currently studying some material linked to this for a test, I will pipe in a few comments. Barbituates work on the reticular activating system, an dwould definately be affected by this lesion. They alter the spinoreticular tract. So, I would imagine anesthetic plans involving barbs would be futile. There are plenty of other agents to use though.

I hope this helped some.
And I hope it is correct info.

Craig

[seewhiterabbit]

I believe, but could be wrong, that the reticular foramtion in the brain and the reticular activating system take part in filtering out certain stimuli that we encounter. Apparently, if we did not have this system filtering out some stimuli, we would go insane because we would be aware of ALL stimuli. Hence, the reticular activating system allows us to sleep because it allows us to filter out certain stimuli. For instance, when we first get it bed, we feel the sheets on our skin, but after a while, we adjust and forget that all these sheets are touching our skin and we are able to relax more and therefore get to sleep, but if we never adjusted to anything or if all stiumuli were constantly being perceived and known of, then our bodies would freak out. So if there are lesions in the reticular activating system in some mice, then it would be fair to say that the reticular activating system may not be capable of doing its job and therefore those mice would be aware of all stimuli and therefore may not be able to sleep.
Is this what you were looking for? I could be wrong, but I think this is right.

[Qwiigley]

This is rather interesting