Current assessment of targets and theories of anaesthesia.

In this ®nal article I shall try to summarize new scienti®c insights resulting from and in connection with the Sixth International Conference on Molecular and Basic Mechanisms of Anaesthesia (MAC2001) regarding the targets at which anaesthetics act, the mechanisms underlying their actions at these targets, and the implications for theories of anaesthesia. The ®rst section of this review will consider primarily the targets of anaesthetic action that were presented at MAC2001, and the second section will summarize mechanisms of anaesthetic actions at these sites that were presented at the meeting and in earlier reviews. Discussion of whether these targets or mechanisms are relevant to general anaesthesia will be reserved for the ®nal section, where theories of anaesthesia are considered.