Dharamshala, June 30 -- The scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi, have achieved an important breakthrough, that may advance our understanding of consciousness and how living beings react to anaesthesia, the institute said on Monday.

In two recent seminal articles, published in internationally recognised journals, advanced biology and chemical and biomedical imaging, they discovered that plants cellular world respond to anaesthesia through a remarkably synchronised manner and follow a hierarchical cascade mechanism for precise and sequential shutdown of intracellular components under anaesthetic stress, even though the plants do not possess either a brain or nervous system.

The study was conducted under prof Laxmi...