October 2026

AY '26-'27 Goals

• Submit a manuscript for publication
  • Meet w/ Nina
  • Identify two journals (plan A and plan B) to submit Brandon's study to. Understand their submission requirements. Write up the introduction for the study in LaTeX, formatted and tailored appropriately for each journal.
• Submit RISE 1 application
  • Narrow down research directions and goals
  • Literature review to refine research aims
  • Identify mentors and institutional resources
• Identify additional funding sources and apply
• Start recruiting a research team

10/2

• E-mailed slides to Nina and followed up on study. It is currently paused due to a bupivacaine shortage.
• Texted Brandon about which journals to submit to. 1st choice: A&A, 2nd choice: Journal for Obstetric Anesthesia
• Does TIVA prevent cancer recurrence? Head of Huntsman anesthesia did a cancer anesthesia fellowship and researched this a bit. Though he's now burned out on research, he's the guy to talk to about what's already been done or not.
• Hamilton and I talked about why ketamine causes lasting changes in the brain long after the drug is gone. Is it a change to a gap junction network? Is it anti-inflammatory circulating EVs?. There are three papers on MedLine related to ketamine and EVs, none of which look (anti-)inflammatory molecules. Do circulating EVs after propofol anesthetic also contain the inflammatory cytokines that are seen after isoflurane?

Mechanisms of Anesthesia

Big picture: understand the temporospatial changes in neural activity induced by various anesthetics. Can we recapitulate those with steerable, low latency, closed-loop non-invasive neuromodulation or use this knowledge to drive discovery of novel drugs?

• High-throughput screen of anesthetics (and anesthetic reversal agents) in C.elegans. I could work in parallel in a different organism (e.g. yeast, jellyfish, hydra, sea anemones, corral, bacteria, plants, neuronal explants).
• Based on 30 years of in vitro studies (n>300), most anesthetics exhibit similar potency across a range of receptors. Most receptors are non-selective for ligands. What this paper addresses but doesn't answer is whether the receptors are present at the correct locations and necessary to the anesthetic behavioral response.
• Some anesthetics (ketamine, dexmedetomidine, etomidate, benzos) are fairly selective, but are rarely used as sole anesthetics.
• 2026 A&A paper argues that classifying anesthetics as, say, GABAergic vs. NMDAergic is misleading. Propofol for instance actually has higher potency at the α4β2 nAChR and HCN1 receptors than at the "classic" GABA_AR receptor.
• Are there pharmacological inhibitors with receptor specificity? When given together with "promiscuous" anesthetics, what happens? For instance, is propofol equally effective when given with a specific HCN1 receptor inhibitor? What about a GABA_AR inhibitor? Could you do optogenetic location-specific inducible receptor knockdowns? Do model organisms already exist?
• Hamilton has a gap junction (network of gap junctions?) and some specific neurons that he think are a conserved mechanism of anesthesia. He wants to test this by doing a screen of a bunch of different anesthetics in WT and KO worms with a behavioral screening assay. He has a behavior rig that basically automatically records swimming speed. He wants to look for the EC50 of various anesthetics and see if that number is shifted with KO or KD of different gap junctions.
• Worms natively have a blue-light rhodopsin that triggers an aversion response where they turn around and go the opposite direction.
• Next call 10/14.
• What are the differences in mechanisms for amnesia, hypnosis, immobility, and analgesia?

CLAN

Alpha entrainment analgesia study

• • Successfully entrain alpha. What were we doing wrong? Is there anything in the literature that can guide a protocol modification?
  • Can I incorporate withdrawal thresholds?
  • Make it multi-center
  • Is alpha dropout selective for certain types of pain?
  • Power analysis based on pilot study
  • Systematic review and meta analysis

EEG effects of anesthetic agents

Look at benzos, opioids, precedex, and their respective reversal agents. Also caffeine, methylphenidate, and methohexital. In MedLine, combine each agent with the search term Electroencephalography/ and add limits for Adults, Humans, and English. Which drugs are most target selective? What are their EEG effects?

• Yohimbine = 9
  • Yohimbine stimulates NE release from the locus ceruleus (riba2005journalofneuroscience). It decreases latency of the P200 in ERPs, suggesting a possible improvement in selective attention to environmental stimuli (turetsky2002psychophysiology).
• Naloxone = 28
  • Fentanyl self-administration and passive administration (1.5 mg/70 kg) have differential EEG effects, including higher central-midline delta enhancement.
• Methylphenidate = 68
• Methohexital = 80
• Flumazenil = 94
• Caffeine = 138

CO2

• Does permissive hypercapnia improve hemodynamic stability, improve oxygen delivery to tissues, deepen anesthesia, and speed recovery?

Depression

• Do ketamine, TIVA w/ propofol, TIVA w/ remimazolam, psychedelics, or burst suppression modulate the post-operative risk of depression?