Abstract: General anaesthesia is an important medical technique to ensure the safety of patients during clinical surgeries and invasive examinations. According to the route of administration, general anaesthesia can be divided into three categories: inhalation general anaesthesia, intravenous general anaesthesia and combined intravenousinhalation anaesthesia. With the continuous advancement of highly specific targeting markers, observation and intervention tools, previous studies have resolved some of the mechanisms of action of general anaesthetic drugs in the central nervous system. Taking inhalation anesthetics sevoflurane and isoflurane as well as the intravenous anesthetic propofol as examples, the aim of this paper is to comprehensively review the history of general anaesthetics,systematically investigate the targets of clinically used general anaesthetics in the brain cells and neural circuits based on optogenetic and chemical genetics techniques. In addition, the paper also looks forward to the future direction of brain mechanism research of general anaesthetics, in order to improve our understanding of the brain mechanism of general anaesthetics.