The lights are out but someone’s home: sensory processing in anaesthetized human brains

Nature, Published online: 06 May 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01310-4

Detailed neural recordings were made from a brain structure called the hippocampus in unconscious anaesthetized people. Neuronal activity responded to ‘oddballs’ in a series of auditory tones, encoded complex meaning-related properties of language and could even predict upcoming words in a heard phrase.