A role for the thalamus in danger evoked awakening during sleep.

ABSTRACT: Sleep involves a relative disconnection from the environment, yet sensory stimuli can still trigger awakenings. The mechanism underlying sensory vigilance and stimulus discrimination during sleep remains unclear. Here, we showed that neutral auditory stimuli evoked responses across parallel auditory and non-auditory pathways, including the auditory cortex and thalamus, the hippocampus and centro-medial thalamus (CMT). Using a convolutional neural network, we identified CMT activity as the most discriminant hub for auditory-evoked sleep-to-wake transitions among all recorded structures. Furthermore, we found that prior associative learning of auditory cues with danger (conditioned stimulus, CS+) resulted in increased awakening upon CS+ exposure during NREM, but not REM, sleep. These sleep-t

SUBMITTER: Boccalaro IL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12313869 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature