[Robelius]

Are you saying that what's happening is the permeability of the cell membrane changes with their physical states (from a scale of "more liquid" to "more solid")and that change impacts the transmission rate of the neurons? And an example of this would be an anesthesiologist putting you under is them making your cell membrane more solid to increase the resistance those neuron transmissions experience, just like adding more resistance to a circuit to reduce the voltage?

Disclaimer that biological sciences aren't my strength so I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.

[superkuh]

No, it's not about ions going through the membrane or membrane pemeability. It is not about resistance to ions flow across the 10nm they travel perpendicular to the membrane. Transport of ions across through ion channels are required for the effect but the membrane itself (usually) is not leaking and I'm not talking about changes in leakage.

It is about how the various ions like Na+ and Ca+2 associated with the membrane itself to change the membrane's physical properties. When there's lots of light gas anesthetic dissolved in the lipid membrane keeping the heat capacity low (disordered) it is thermodynamically harder (requires more energy) to form the organized 'solid' (actually more like a gel) state that propagates as the action potential.

ref: https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.11481 - good overview paper, http://erewhon.superkuh.com/library/Neuroscience/Lipid%20Mem... - other papers/books on the subject.