Anesthesia and neuroimaging: investigating the neural correlates of unconsciousness

Highlights • Anesthetic sedation and neuroimaging are often combined to study the neural substrates of consciousness. • With increasing sedation, complex cognitive processes are impaired before more-basic processes at sensory processes. • Sedation disrupts processing between cortical networks, and in association cortices before sensory cortices. • These studies are essential for interpreting brain activity in patients with disorders of consciousness.