Neural Origin of Specificity Change of Functional Connectivity at Different Anesthesia Levels

Xiao Liu¹, Xiao-Hong Zhu¹, Yi Zhang¹, Wei Chen¹

To further understand the mechanism of the specificity change of functional connectivity across anesthesia levels, EEG signals were recorded from rats under different anesthesia conditions using isoflurane. EEG power correlations between electrodes located at different brain regions demonstrated very similar dependencies on anesthesia as BOLD signal correlations observed previously: the correlation strength increased while the spatial specificity decreased from the light to deep anesthesia. The finding provides strong evidence for the neural origin of the change of functional connectivity specificity across different anesthesia levels.