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Ketamine Broke the Threshold, Not the Neural Signal

Mouse cortical recordings retained strong drug-state ranking across five anesthetics once the decision boundary was recalibrated.

Published Updated Story ID: mp-2026-08-05-005
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Summary

Mouse cortical recordings retained strong drug-state ranking across five anesthetics once the decision boundary was recalibrated.

Researchers trained awake-versus-anesthetized decoders on mouse electrocorticography under five anesthetics and held out one drug at a time. Even for ketamine, band-power features ranked sessions with a reported AUROC of 0.980, but the fixed decision threshold pushed balanced accuracy toward chance. Anchoring the threshold to each subject's pre-induction baseline raised ketamine balanced accuracy from 0.50 to 0.85 and outperformed the tested domain-adaptation method. Because the ketamine sessions came from only three mice also represented under other drugs, the authors explicitly limit the claim to within-subject cross-drug transfer.

Why it matters

Mouse cortical recordings retained strong drug-state ranking across five anesthetics once the decision boundary was recalibrated.

Limits and context

  • Because the ketamine sessions came from only three mice also represented under other drugs, the authors explicitly limit the claim to within-subject cross-drug transfer.

Key claims

  1. Mouse cortical recordings retained strong drug-state ranking across five anesthetics once the decision boundary was recalibrated.

    Qualification: Because the ketamine sessions came from only three mice also represented under other drugs, the authors explicitly limit the claim to within-subject cross-drug transfer.

    Evidence: source-2026-08-05-005

Sources

  1. arXiv preprint 2608.02646arXiv · primary research

Corrections

No corrections have been recorded for this story.

Ketamine Broke the Threshold, Not the Neural Signal · The Machine Press