The Correlation between Critical Anaesthetic Dose and Melting Temperatures in Synthetic Membranes

The anaesthetic potency of a substance is closely related to its lipophilicty. This has been interpreted as evidence for a lipid mechanism of action for anaesthesia. However, with the success of the conductance based Hodgkin-Huxley model for the nerve impulse, the scientific community shifted to considering protein ion-channels the cellular target for anaesthetics. Today, the lipid hypothesis has returned with a mechanism of action based on a whole new view of the nerve impulse as a theromodynamic event rather than an electric one. The new model is known as the soliton model, because it describes the nerve impulse as a solitary density wave. In this project we find that the soliton model can explain the cutoff of anaesthetic potency in n-alkanes. Then we consider the medical implications that the soliton might have for the neurological desease, epilepsy.