Yuval Nir

Entrained cortical delta–spindle activity, not periodic synchrony, prevents arousal by NREM thalamic bursts

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Episodic memory consolidation by reactivation of human concept neurons during sleep reflects contents, not sequence of events https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.10.698827v1

Sleep-dependent infraslow rhythms are evolutionarily conserved across reptiles and mammals - Nature Neuroscience Bergel et al. show that an infraslow rhythm connecting the brain and body during sleep is shared by lizards, mammals and birds, revealing an ancestral process and reshaping our understanding of the ev...

Sleep-dependent infraslow rhythms are evolutionarily conserved across reptiles and mammals

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An open science resource for accelerating scalable digital health research in autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions - Nature Neuroscience This paper describes the Simons Sleep Project, an open resource designed to accelerate research into the sleep and daily behaviors of autistic children using synchronized recordings from multiple wear...

Sleep and digital health in autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy new year to all !

A hippocampal ‘sharp-wave sleep’ state that is dissociable from cortical sleep - Nature Neuroscience Through continuous multiday recordings in rats, the authors reveal that hippocampal sharp waves reflect sleep need and define a homeostatically regulated sleep state that enables the hippocampus to di...

A hippocampal ‘sharp-wave sleep’ state that is dissociable from cortical sleep

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

VTA dopaminergic neuronal activity during NREM sleep is modulated by learning and facilitates motor memory consolidation Activity of VTA dopaminergic neurons during NREM sleep facilitates motor memory consolidation and is coordinated with spindles.

VTA dopaminergic neuronal activity during NREM sleep is modulated by learning and facilitates motor memory consolidation | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/full/10....

@shagido.bsky.social Galia Avidan | Kalanit | Grill-Spector | Shany Grossman | Uri Hasson | Michal Ramot |
Marlene Behrmann | James DiCarlo | Rainer Goebel | Lionel Naccache | Leon Deouell | Talma Hendler | Galit Yovel | Shimon Ullman | Florian Mormann

The Mind's Eye: A quest from vision to consciousness - Symposium in honor of Rafi Malach
Incredible lineup assembled celebrating the career of an amazing scientist
Join us on December 14-15 at the Weizmann Institute !

Wake consolidates event memory, sleep binds it with context Sleep is thought to be superior to wakefulness in consolidating memory, due to a hippocampus-driven process enhancing the contextual integration of events. We compared recall of associative memory in ...

Wake consolidates event memory, sleep binds it with context:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Simultaneous stomach-brain electrophysiology reveals dynamic coupling in human sleep Sleep involves continuous communication between the brain and body, yet the dynamics of peripheral signals during human sleep remain poorly understood. Here we tested whether gastric electrophysiology...

Interesting! Simultaneous stomach-brain electrophysiology reveals dynamic coupling in human sleep:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Attentional failures after sleep deprivation are locked to joint neurovascular, pupil and cerebrospinal fluid flow dynamics - Nature Neuroscience Yang et al. show that moments of failed attention we experience after sleep deprivation reflect brief ‘sleep-like’ episodes in the brain, corresponding to a brain- and body-wide event with altered bra...

Attentional failures after sleep deprivation are locked to joint neurovascular, pupil and cerebrospinal fluid flow dynamics

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Falling asleep follows a predictable bifurcation dynamic - Nature Neuroscience Li et al. propose a conceptual framework to study the phenomenon of falling asleep based on electroencephalogram data. They show that a tipping point marks the brain’s nonlinear wake-to-sleep transiti...

Falling asleep follows a predictable bifurcation dynamic

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hemispherotomy leads to persistent sleep-like slow waves in the isolated cortex of awake humans Hemispherotomy is a neurosurgical procedure for treating refractory epilepsy by disconnecting a significant portion of the cortex. This study shows that the isolated cortex exhibits EEG patterns resem...

Checkout this article I found at PLOS: dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Head-direction cells as a neural compass in bats navigating outdoors on a remote oceanic island Animals and humans rely on their navigation skills to survive. However, spatial neurons in the brain’s “navigation circuit” had not previously been studied under real-world conditions. We conducted an...

Head-direction cells as a neural compass in bats navigating outdoors on a remote oceanic island | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Convergent Control of NREM Sleep and Anesthesia by Prefrontal Layer 5 Extratelencephalic Neurons The cortical mechanisms that actively suppress consciousness remain poorly understood. Here, we identify a specific subset of prefrontal cortical (PFC) neurons preferentially active under anesthesia w...

Convergent Control of NREM Sleep and Anesthesia by Prefrontal Layer 5 Extratelencephalic Neurons:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Proud and delighted to deliver the keynote presentation at “Sleep Down Under 2025” Adelaide, organized by the Australasian Sleep Association #SleepDownUnder

Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics - Nature Reframing of arousal as a latent dynamical system can reconstruct multidimensional measurements of large-scale spatiotemporal brain dynamics on the timescale of seconds in mice.

Arousal as a universal embedding for spatiotemporal brain dynamics:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Bidirectional modulation of sleep and wakefulness via prefrontal cortical chemogenetics The drive to sleep is inescapable but its biological substrate remains largely elusive. Until recently, the search for sleep centres in the mammalian brain focussed on subcortical neurons that promote...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to share our latest paper - now out in @science.org - we showed how oxytocin modulates maternally-directed behavior in young mice (P15).

Thanks Jonas!

and to alumni and colleagues for valuable feedback and inputs Hanna Hayat, Yaniv Sela, @innaslutsky.bsky.social
@oyiz.bsky.social

🙏

(6/6)

✨ Take-home: LC neurons are not a single unitary arousal system.

LC→PRN brainstem pathway is critical for sound-evoked awakening

Thanks to team 🙌 led by amazing
@nmatosevich.bsky.social , Noa Regev, U. Kimchi, N. Zelinger,
@SinaKabaha Amit Marmelstein @noamgabay.bsky.social

(5/6)

What happens if you silence LC synapses?

Using an optoGPCR (PdCO), we found that shutting down LC→PRN boosts sigma power and deepens NREM sleep. Silencing both PRN + BF was even more effective.

(4/6)

Timing is everything ⏱️

Optogenetic activation showed that sound-evoked awakening depends on which LC neurons are active AND when they fire - synchrony with the sound is key.

(3/6)

Here’s the twist: only the LC→PRN pathway shows a fast NE surge when sounds are played during sleep.

That rapid signal predicts whether the sound will wake the mouse.

(2/6)

Not all LC pathways are the same 👀

We compared LC projections to the basal forebrain (BF) and to the brainstem pontine reticular nucleus (PRN).
They turned out to be partially distinct populations.

An early surge of norepinephrine along brainstem pathways drives sensory-evoked awakening The locus coeruleus has a specialized pathway to the brainstem that controls sound-evoked awakening from sleep.

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨(1/6)

Excited to share our work, out now in Science Advances

We show that a rapid norepinephrine surge along a brainstem pathway (LC→PRN) is a key driver of sound-evoked awakenings
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Aperiodic EEG Activity Provides a Linear, Bidirectional, and Spatially Uniform Marker of Subjective and Objective Vigilance in Humans, Both Within and Across States Vigilance is increasingly conceived as a continuum, ranging from full alertness to deep sleep. Despite its fundamental role in cognition, behaviour, and health, reliable physiological markers of vigil...

Aperiodic EEG Activity Provides a Linear, Bidirectional, and Spatially Uniform Marker of Subjective and Objective Vigilance in Humans, Both Within and Across States www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sleep-like slow waves during wakefulness uncover a malignant form of Parkinson’s disease Slow waves during sleep are fundamental for neural homeostasis, metabolic regulation, and waste clearance, and are known to be altered in neurodegenerative diseases. Sleep-like slow waves (SLSW) have ...

Sleep-like slow waves during wakefulness uncover a malignant form of Parkinson’s disease www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning Nature - Human exploration is driven by two distinct neural mechanisms, a valence-independent rate signal and a valence-dependent global noise signal.

Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning:

Congratulations to my colleagues Rony Paz, Ido Strauss, Firas Fahoum for landing this exciting paper in Nature!

rdcu.be/eCJLb