Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

The need to sleep grows with the duration of wakefulness and dissipates with time spent asleep, a process called sleep homeostasis. What are the consequences of staying awake on brain cells, and why is sleep needed? Surprisingly, we do not know whether the firing of cortical neurons is affected by how long an animal has been awake or asleep. Here, we found that after sustained wakefulness cortical neurons fire at higher frequencies in all behavioral states. During early NREM sleep after sustained wakefulness, periods of population activity (ON) are short, frequent, and associated with synchronous firing, while periods of neuronal silence are long and frequent. After sustained sleep, firing rates and synchrony decrease, while the duration of ON periods increases. Changes in firing patterns in NREM sleep correlate with changes in slow-wave activity, a marker of sleep homeostasis. Thus, the systematic increase of firing during wakefulness is counterbalanced by staying asleep.

Original publication

DOI

10.1016/j.neuron.2009.08.024

Type

Journal article

Journal

Neuron

Publication Date

24/09/2009

Volume

63

Pages

865 - 878

Keywords

Action Potentials, Animals, Behavior, Animal, Brain Mapping, Cerebral Cortex, Computer Simulation, Electroencephalography, Fourier Analysis, Homeostasis, Male, Models, Neurological, Neurons, Polysomnography, Rats, Rats, Inbred WKY, Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation, Time Factors, Wakefulness