Background: Anesthetics have been widely used in clinical anesthesia for a wide range of surgeries. The neurotoxicity of anesthetics has been a research hotspot in anesthesiology. Accumulating evidence is forcing the anesthesia community to question the safety of anesthetics to the developing brain. Purpose: It is important to study the relationship between anesthetics and neurotoxicity in order to take necessary measures to counter the neurotoxicity by using anesthetics. Content: This paper reviews the effects of anesthetics to the developing brains and summarizes the possible mechanisms of anesthetics and neurotoxicity. Meanwhile, the author analyzes the experimental and clinical data in recent years. Trend: Due to the difficulty in designing and executing prospective randomized clinical trials, it is unlikely to make substantial progress on the clinical studies of the relationship between anesthetics and neurotoxicity in the near future.