PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Millions of operations are performed each year. Researchers have recently discovered how our brains regain consciousness.
Dozens of healthy people were put through tests for memory, logic, cognition, reaction speed and other tasks.
Then they were put under anesthesia for three hours.
Dr. Max Kelz, an anesthesiologist at Penn Medicine, said the same tasks were performed as the patients regained consciousness.
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“What we found was that abstract logic and reasoning (were) one of the first features to recover as humans exited these very deep states of general anesthesia," said Dr. Kelz.
"I can speculate as to why that might be, but that came as a total surprise.”
He expected these functions to return last with the ability to respond to commands among the first to return. It was the opposite result.
Dr. Kelz speculated it’s because in our evolution, the need to escape danger requires planning and logic.
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