Brain and Sleep Research Laboratory

🙏 Huge thanks to all co-authors for an amazing collaborative effort!

📌 Take-home: Sleep is essential for myelin maintenance. Disrupted oligodendrocyte function may underlie cognitive and behavioral impairments after sleep loss.

💡 Enhancing cholesterol redistribution to myelin prevented conduction delays and behavioral deficits, despite ongoing sleep loss.

At the cellular level, sleep loss triggered ER stress and lipid dysregulation in oligodendrocytes, with a key role for cholesterol homeostasis in myelin.

In rats, chronic sleep loss caused thinner myelin sheaths and slower interhemispheric signal conduction, measured directly in vivo.

Using human MRI data and animal models, we found that poor sleep quality is associated with widespread reductions in white matter integrity.

🧠💤 New lab paper in @pnas.org

Sleep loss doesn’t just make neurons tired - it slows the communication between them.

We show that chronic sleep loss impairs myelin integrity, slows neural signal conduction, and affects cognition & motor behavior.
👉 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🙏 Huge thanks to all co-authors for an amazing collaborative effort!

📌 Take-home:
Sleep is essential for myelin maintenance.
Disrupted oligodendrocyte function may underlie cognitive and behavioral impairments after sleep loss.

💡 Enhancing cholesterol redistribution to myelin prevented conduction delays and behavioral deficits, despite ongoing sleep loss.

At the cellular level, sleep loss triggered ER stress and lipid dysregulation in oligodendrocytes, with a key role for cholesterol homeostasis in myelin.

In rats, sleep loss caused thinner myelin sheaths and an increase in interhemispheric conduction delays, measured directly in vivo.

Using human MRI data and animal models, we found that poor sleep quality is associated with widespread reductions in white matter integrity.

A framework to determine active neurons and networks within the mouse brain reveals how brain activity changes over the course of the day In this study the authors develop a computational pipeline to infer the molecular properties of c-FOS-labelled active neurons and analyze the networks they form. They use this pipeline to characterize...

A framework to determine active neurons and networks within the mouse brain reveals how brain activity changes over the course of the day

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Simultaneous EEG-PET-MRI identifies temporally coupled and spatially structured brain dynamics across wakefulness and NREM sleep - Nature Communications Using simultaneous EEG-PET-MRI, this study reveals tightly coupled physiological dynamics during the descent from wakefulness into NREM sleep and identifies network-specific activity underlying sensor...

Simultaneous EEG-PET-MRI identifies temporally coupled and spatially structured brain dynamics across wakefulness and NREM sleep
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Enhancement of Sleep Slow Wave Activity using Transcranial Electrical Stimulation with Temporal Interference Slow waves mediate restorative functions of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. To enhance slow wave activity (SWA, 0.5-4 Hz) non-invasively, we employed a novel neuromodulatory tool, Transcranial El...

Enhancement of Sleep Slow Wave Activity using Transcranial Electrical Stimulation with Temporal Interference
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Illustration from Ana Yael https://www.anayael.com/

💤🧠🧪 New article! 🧪🧠💤

After years of effort led by @qualiastructure.bsky.social (Nao Tsuchiya and William Wong), Jenny Windt, Katja Valli, Valdas Noreika and @rherzoga.bsky.social, the Dream database is now published in @natcomms.nature.com

**A dream EEG and mentation database**
rdcu.be/eAwni

Mitochondrial origins of the pressure to sleep - Nature Research on Drosophila neurons shows links between the need to sleep and aerobic metabolism, indicating that the pressure to sleep may have a mitochondrial origin.

Mitochondrial origins of the pressure to sleep
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Neuroendocrine circuit for sleep-dependent growth hormone release The increase in growth hormone release during sleep is driven by sleep-wake-dependent activity of stimulatory GHRH neurons and inhibitory SST neurons in the hypothalamus. The released growth hormone e...

Neuroendocrine circuit for sleep-dependent growth hormone release: Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

A time window for memory consolidation during NREM sleep revealed by cAMP oscillation Sleep is crucial for memory formation. Deng et al. find that cAMP levels in mice oscillate with a 1-min cycle during slow-wave sleep, and hippocampal activity at the peak of these oscillations is nece...

A time window for memory consolidation during NREM sleep revealed by cAMP oscillation: Neuron www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Increased CSF drainage by non-invasive manipulation of cervical lymphatics - Nature The outflow pathway of cerebrospinal fluid into lymph nodes in the neck and how non-invasive mechanical stimulation can enhance drainage and restore impaired outflow in aged mice are explored.

Increased CSF drainage by non-invasive manipulation of cervical lymphatics
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The great brain clearance and dementia debate An established theory for how good sleep reduces a person’s risk of neurodegenerative disease has been called into question. The ensuing argument could have enormous consequences for the treatment of ...

The great brain clearance and dementia debate
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Global coordination of brain activity by the breathing cycle - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Synchrony between neuronal activity and the respiratory cycle has been observed in numerous brain regions and across many species. Tort et al. discuss the mechanisms by which brain activity is modulat...

Global coordination of brain activity by the breathing cycle

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

Parallel processing of past and future memories through reactivation and synaptic plasticity mechanisms during sleep - Nature Communications Neural mechanisms underlying memory acquisition and encoding are not fully understood. Here authors show that during sleep, besides the replay of past memory, coactivity of a new set of cells arises (...

Parallel processing of past and future memories through reactivation and synaptic plasticity mechanisms during sleep

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

ATP-sensitive potassium channels alter glycolytic flux to modulate cortical activity and sleep | PNAS Metabolism plays a key role in the maintenance of sleep/wake states. Brain lactate fluctuations are a biomarker of sleep/wake transitions, where in...

ATP-sensitive potassium channels alter glycolytic flux to modulate cortical activity and sleep
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Reversible reduction in brain myelin content upon marathon running - Nature Metabolism Using magnetic resonance imaging on marathon runners, Ramos-Cabrer, Cabrera-Zubizarreta et al. report that the signal detected as a surrogate of myelin content is significantly reduced after exercise,...

Reversible reduction in brain myelin content upon marathon running
www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Enhanced memory despite severe sleep loss in Drosophila insomniac mutants Sleep is known to support memory. In this study, the authors identify an instance where memory hyperfunction may actually provoke sleep deficits. They find that the short-sleep Drosophila mutants, ins...

Enhanced memory despite severe sleep loss in Drosophila insomniac mutants

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Sleep pressure accumulates in a voltage-gated lipid peroxidation memory - Nature Sleep-inducing neurons in Drosophila rely on Hyperkinetic, the β-subunit of the KV1 channel Shaker, to monitor sleep need by translating lipid peroxidation events into changes in the oxidation state o...

Sleep pressure accumulates in a voltage-gated lipid peroxidation memory
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Consciousness or pseudo-consciousness? A clash of two paradigms - Nature Neuroscience Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from consciousness, which is subjective, and accounts for its presence and quality in objective, testable terms. Attempts to label as ‘pseudoscientific’ a th...

Consciousness or pseudo-consciousness? A clash of two paradigms

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

Pupil size reveals arousal level fluctuations in human sleep - Nature Communications Arousal levels regulate sleep, but accurate noninvasive measures are lacking. Here, a novel method is introduced to track pupil-indexed arousal levels during human sleep, revealing pupil size changes ...

Pupil size reveals arousal level fluctuations in human sleep
www.nature.com/articles/s41...