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Vyazovskiy Group

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Sleep, brain and behaviour laboratory

Cortical local field potentials and multiunit activity during sleep

Sleep is traditionally defined and characterised by behavioural and electrophysiological criteria. For example, during sleep we are immobile and less responsive to the environment, and global cortical activity is distinctly different from an awake state. The differences between waking and sleep become less apparent as we look closer at the spatio-temporal patterns of cortical activity by recording local field potentials or neuronal spiking. It has been shown, that sleep-like patterns of neuronal activity are not uncommon during waking, even during active behaviours, and especially when the animals are drowsy or sleep-deprived. On the other hand, the main network oscillations during sleep – slow waves (~0.5-4 Hz) and spindles (~9-16 Hz) – are remarkably dynamic and idiosyncratic events, mostly occurring locally, and never encompassing the entire cortex at once. Slow waves are considered a reliable marker of preceding sleep-wake history, and a measure of sleep ‘intensity’. The ‘homeostatic principle’ postulates that the longer we stay awake, the more intense is our subsequent sleep. Recent evidence suggests that sleep homeostasis is a local process, and it has been identified both in cortical and subcortical structures, such as the dorsal striatum. Sleep spindles, which arise within the thalamocortical circuitry, also occur locally in the neocortex; and their occurrence varies greatly depending on the cortical region, the time of day and the immediate preceding state. Finally, individual cortical neurons are highly diverse with respect to the state dependency of their spiking activity, and, importantly, their response to preceding sleep-wake history. Over the last few decades our knowledge about sleep has progressed tremendously. However, the fundamental questions remain: what is ‘noise’ and what is ‘signal’ in cortical activity during sleep, and how does the global and precisely regulated state of sleep emerge from the activity (or lack thereof) of local and distributed, cortical and subcortical circuits.

In our research we use a broad range of techniques and approaches, such as behavioural tasks, electrophysiology, transgenic mouse models, local brain microstimulation and pharmacology.

Video credit: Vicky Isley and Paul Smith (boredomresearch).

Our team

Affiliated members


Angus Fisk 

Postgraduate Student

Christian Harding

Postgraduate Student

Hannah Alfonsa

Postdoctoral Research Scientist

Selected publications

Collaborators

DPAG

Zoltan Molnar

Ed Mann

James Cantley

Victoria Bajo Lorenzana

Fernando Nodal

Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences 

Russell Foster

Stuart Peirson

Aarti Jagannath

Heidi Johansen-Berg

Department of Experimental Psychology

David Bannerman

Department of Pharmacology

Colin J Akerman

Tim Viney

Department of Engineering Science

Maarten De Vos

Radcliffe Department of Medicine

Alastair Buchan





What's new

Shaping our understanding of why we sleep

Associate Professor Vladyslav Vyazovskiy has edited a special issue of Current Opinion of Physiology with Professor A. Jennifer Morton from the University of Cambridge. “Physiology of Sleep” compiles the latest developments in sleep research around the complex question of ‘why do we sleep?’

Cristina Blanco Duque is a CSF 2019 Award Winner

Congratulations are in order for Wellcome Trust doctoral student Cristina Blanco Duque, the winner of the Travel Award and the Award for Best Contribution at the International Conference of Advanced Sleep Modulation Technologies.

Latest publications

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