• Bradley H Lee, John Thomas Chan, Obhi Hazarika, Laszlo Vutskits, and Jeffrey W Sall.
• Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, Unites States of America.
• Plos One. 2014 Jan 1;9(8):e105340.

BackgroundAnesthetic exposure early in life affects neural development and long-term cognitive function, but our understanding of the types of memory that are altered is incomplete. Specific cognitive tests in rodents that isolate different memory processes provide a useful approach for gaining insight into this issue.MethodsPostnatal day 7 (P7) rats were exposed to either desflurane or isoflurane at 1 Minimum Alveolar Concentration for 4 h. Acute neuronal death was assessed 12 h later in the thalamus, CA1-3 regions of hippocampus, and dentate gyrus. In separate behavioral experiments, beginning at P48, subjects were evaluated in a series of object recognition tests relying on associative learning, as well as social recognition.ResultsExposure to either anesthetic led to a significant increase in neuroapoptosis in each brain region. The extent of neuronal death did not differ between groups. Subjects were unaffected in simple tasks of novel object and object-location recognition. However, anesthetized animals from both groups were impaired in allocentric object-location memory and a more complex task requiring subjects to associate an object with its location and contextual setting. Isoflurane exposure led to additional impairment in object-context association and social memory.ConclusionIsoflurane and desflurane exposure during development result in deficits in tasks relying on associative learning and recognition memory. Isoflurane may potentially cause worse impairment than desflurane.

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