Why Does Sleep Slow-Wave Activity Increase After Extended Wake? Assessing the Effects of Increased Cortical Firing During Wake and Sleep.

ABSTRACT: During non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, cortical neurons alternate between ON periods of firing and OFF periods of silence. This bi-stability, which is largely synchronous across neurons, is reflected in the EEG as slow waves. Slow-wave activity (SWA) increases with wake duration and declines homeostatically during sleep, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. One possibility is neuronal "fatigue": high, sustained firing in wake would force neurons to recover with more frequent and longer OFF periods during sleep. Another possibility is net synaptic potentiation during wake: stronger coupling among neurons would lead to greater synchrony and therefore higher SWA. Here, we obtained a comparable increase in sustained firing (6 h) in cortex by: (1) keeping mice awake by exposure to

SUBMITTER: Rodriguez AV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5148229 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature