Read something, twice. If it doesn’t read the same both times, you’re probably dreaming.
Waking up from surgery can be disorienting. One minute you’re in an operating room counting backwards from 10, the next you’re in the recovery ward sans appendix, tonsils, or wisdom teeth. And unlike getting up from a good night’s sleep, where you know that you’ve been out for hours, waking from anesthesia feels like hardly any time has passed. Now, thanks to the humble honeybee, scientists are starting to understand this sense of time loss. New research shows that general anesthetics disrupt the social insect’s circadian rhythm, or internal clock, delaying the onset of timed behaviors such as foraging and mucking up their sense of direction. (…)
Warman says his team is currently looking at whether shining bright light at someone under anesthesia—a well known way to alter the circadian clock—could also reduce the procedure’s disorienting effects.
