Sleep, brain and behaviour laboratory
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
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Vladyslav Vyazovskiy
Associate Professor of Neuroscience
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Laura McKillop
Novo Nordisk Postdoctoral Fellow
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Cristina Blanco Duque
Postgraduate Student
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Martin Kahn
Postgraduate Student
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Lukas B. Krone
Wellcome Trust Doctoral Student in Neuroscience
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Yige Huang
MRC/Stroke Association Joint-Funded Clinical Research Training Fellow
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Christopher Thomas
Postgraduate Student
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Linus Milinski
Postgraduate student
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Alberto Lazari
Postgraduate Student
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Jose Prius Mengual
Postdoctoral Researcher in Sleep Neurobiology
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Sian Wilcox
Postgraduate Student
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Elise Meijer
Postgraduate student
Affiliated members
Postgraduate Student
Postgraduate Student
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Collaborators
DPAG
Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences
Department of Experimental Psychology
Department of Pharmacology
Department of Engineering Science
Radcliffe Department of Medicine
What's new
How brain networks cooperate to control our sleep
13 August 2020
Two new papers from the Vyazovskiy Group and both Oxford University and international collaborators have made important progress in bridging the gap between the local and global levels of sleep regulation.
Shaping our understanding of why we sleep
1 July 2020
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?’
Latest publications
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Comment on 'Lack of evidence for associative learning in pea plants'.
Journal article
Gagliano M. et al, (2020), Elife, 9
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Forward genetics identifies a novel sleep mutant with sleep state inertia and REM sleep deficits.
Journal article
Banks GT. et al, (2020), Sci Adv, 6
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Sleep-related memory consolidation in the psychosis spectrum phenotype.
Journal article
Purple RJ. et al, (2020), Neurobiol Learn Mem
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Global sleep homeostasis reflects temporally and spatially integrated local cortical neuronal activity.
Journal article
Thomas CW. et al, (2020), Elife, 9