Although anesthetics have been used successfully for over 150 years, their mechanisms of action are little understood, a fact that significantly limits our ability to design new and safer agents. In Neural Mechanisms of Anesthesia, leading investigators critically evaluate the latest information on how anesthetics work at the molecular, cellular, organ, and whole animal level. These distinguished experts review anesthetic effects on memory, consciousness, and movement and spell out in detail both the anatomic structures and physiological processes that are their likely targets, as well as the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which they operate. They also discuss drugs that are not truly general anesthetics, but are frequently used in clinical practice and can affect the action of general anesthetics (e.g., local anesthetics, opiates, neuromuscular blocking drugs). Comprehensive and authoritative, Neural Mechanisms of Anesthesia draws together and critically reviews all the recent research on anesthetic mechanisms, highlighting the precise routes along which these substances operate, and how this deeper understanding will lead to the design of effective drugs free of undesirable side effects.