Neuroscience of Sleep

Reflections on the EMBO Workshop: Neuroscience of Sleep 2025 Summary: The inaugural EMBO workshop on the neuroscience of sleep brought together a global sleep research community to discuss recent advances across species, scales and systems. The meeting explored...

I feel wonderful being a part of this meeting review alongside @ritikamukherji.bsky.social and Kamakshi. Thanks to @melnattur.bsky.social and all the co-organizers for this opportunity and their valuable inputs.

journals.biologists.com/bio/article/...

Reflections on the EMBO Workshop: Neuroscience of Sleep 2025 Summary: The inaugural EMBO workshop on the neuroscience of sleep brought together a global sleep research community to discuss recent advances across species, scales and systems. The meeting explored...

Happy to share a wonderful Meeting Review of our @sleepneuroscience.bsky.social
meeting in March! #EMBONeuroSleep

shorturl.at/bFxPl

Thoughtful discussions, and an all round whale of a time! Lovely to celebrate 25 years of sleep in flies with our fields founders - Paul Shaw and Amita Sehgal. Thanks to everybody that made it out

And, it's a wrap! 3 wonderful days after a year in planning for the EMBO Workshop Neuroscience of Sleep @sleepneuroscience.bsky.social .

EMBO workshop-Neuroscience of Sleep 2025!
@sleepneuroscience.bsky.social
#EMBOneuroSleep

After an incredible @sleepneuroscience.bsky.social workshop, we got to experience Holi!

Had a really amazing time @sleepneuroscience.bsky.social at Neuroscience of sleep conference in Delhi. Thought provoking science and fabulous company. Thankyou @melnattur.bsky.social and other organisers.

Amazing time indeed. Thank you so much, everybody, and @melnattur.bsky.social particularly! 🐙

Safoora Naz discussed data from her PhD project looking at the impact of auditory stimulation on elderly persons. Her work creatively combines classical and new-age machine learning techniques for large-scale analysis of sleep data.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Bindu Kutty’s comprehensive talk on common sleep abnormalities in neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and depression. She also discussed interesting studies from meditators.

#EMBOneuroSleep

“Sleep homeostasis isn’t just a neuronal game, astrocytes play a key role too!”, says Ashley Ingiosi. Proteomic analyses from their lab reveal that astrocytes are more impacted by sleep recovery post deprivation than deprivation itself.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Mubarak Hussain Syed talks about sleep-regulating neurons in the dorsal fan-shaped body (dFB) that originate from late neural stem cells, with fate shaped by ecdysone signaling. Could sleep disorders be traced back to neurodevelopment? Interesting and insightful!
#EMBOneuroSleep

Horst Obenhaus’s talk on active sleep in Octopuses and cuttlefish probed deeper into cephalopod physiology - exploring the role of sleep in reactivation, behaviourally and using tetrode recordings.

#EMBOneuroSleep

5% of Indians carries the gene deletion for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Dhandapany Perundurai shows that sleep fragmentation is a risk factor for heart failure in humanised transgenic HCM mice - suggesting that regularising sleep may help patients.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Rakshita Deshmukh from IIT Kanpur presented her work on the impact of N3 sleep on anxiety behaviours. This shows that N3 sleep manipulation as a non-invasive and non-pharmacological intervention for anxiety-related cognitive dysfunctions.

#EMBOneuroSleep

In ‘Sleep sculpts even the simplest of systems: sleep and the single synapse’ - Noelle L’Etoile discussed the neural dynamics of sleep and memory consolidation in nematodes showing the critical role of sleep post-spaced-odor-training to induce long-term memory.

#EMBOneuroSleep

In Oleg Lyamin’s talk we heard about the fascinating ways in which various sea lions and seals sleep while swimming, in the presence of predators and while balancing the need to feed. These strategies include unihemispheric sleep and apneas during sleep dives.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Ritika Mukherji talks about Djungarian hamsters that enter torpor state via NREM sleep, showing distinct EEG & LFP slow-wave patterns along with energy savings revealing a tight link between sleep and hypo metabolic state of torpor.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Gabriela Wagner talks about arctic reindeer that show sleep homeostasis to extreme seasonal changes. They spent less time in slow-wave sleep during rumination- suggesting rumination may lie at the border of Wakefulness and sleep.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Neils Rattenborg talked about ecological flexibility in avian sleep - how different species like ducks, pigeons, frigatebirds, penguins adapt their sleep to suit ecological needs - unihemispheric sleep, microsleep & reproductive sleeplessness.

#EMBOneuroSleep

NBRC’s Karthick Ravichandran elegantly tied together the sub-cellular, metabolic & cognitive effects of tiredness in mice - highlighting the transcriptional and translational control of mitochondrial activity upon sleep deprivation.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Nitin Chouhan talks about the role of sleep in memory consolidation, showing that drosophila can switch to sleep-independent memory consolidation when starved or acutely exposed to ethanol. Rewards like sucrose restore sleep’s role in memory consolidation.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Deepika Kant discussed the critical role of sleep in compensatory contextual fear memory following dorsal hippocampus loss. The infra-limbic cortex compensates for the loss of the dorsal hippocampus; but can’t in the absence of sleep.

#EMBOneuroSleep

An exciting start to Day-2 EMBO Workshop: Neuroscience of Sleep.

"We sleep to restore and maintain the brain’s computational sweet spot—criticality!", says Keith Hengen. Wakefulness disrupts it, sleep restores it, and explains sleep's necessity across evolution.

#EMBOneuroSleep #braincomputation

"Sleep loss isn’t the villain—stress is" says Giorgio Gilestro. His research shows that gut ROS buildup is the main reason for Sleep deprivation induced lethality. Rethinking sleep studies starts here!

#EMBOneuroSleep

Sleep isn’t just rest —it’s a reset, says Anna Suppermpool. In zebra fish, synapse loss depends on sleep pressure, peaking after prolonged wakefulness. Using single neuronal imaging to show that not all type of sleep can regulate synaptic homeostasis.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Aditi Pophale fascinated us with a talk about ‘quiet, and ‘active’ sleep in Octopuses. They sleep with dynamic skin pattern & colour changes that are result of controlled changes in neural activity. This offers fresh insights into the evolution of sleep.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Krishna Melnattur shares insights into sleep plasticity and cognition! How sleep modulates learning and memory, and how social enrichment boosts sleep and regulates connections in the Drosophila brain.

#EMBOneuroSleep #SleepLearningMemory

Franz Weber asks what drives the brain into REM sleep? Using neuropixels recordings and multi-dimensional analyses methods to reveal dynamics in the brainstem guiding NREM to REM transitions.

#EMBOneuroSleep

Shinjae Chung talks about how stress fragments sleep, linking brain rhythms to sleep quality. She investigates the role of different neurotransmitter systems in the sleep-stress interactions. Unlocking the neural code of quality sleep!

#EMBOneuroSleep