When patients awaken from surgery, they’re usually groggy and disoriented; it can take hours for a patient to become fully clearheaded again. Emery Brown, an MIT neuroscientist and an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), thinks it doesn’t have to be that way.

Brown and colleagues at MGH are studying the effects of stimulants that could be used to bring patients out of general anesthesia much faster. One potential candidate is Ritalin, the drug commonly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In a study published online Sept. 20 in the journal Anesthesiology, the researchers show that giving anesthetized rats an injection of Ritalin brings them out of anesthesia almost immediately.