Breakthroughs and perspective of wakefulness and sleep researches in 2019

Abstract

Wakefulness is a prerequisite for the dominant brain functions such as perception, movement, learning and memory, and thinking. Sleep weakens the body's perception and response to the surroundings, which is helpful for the recovery of homeostasis and information processing. In 2019, the breakthroughs in wakefulness and sleep have been made in the following aspects: ① the genetic and pedigree characteristics of sleep, such as revealing the genetic control mechanism of "natural short sleep", and discovering the existence of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in zebrafish; ② the neural mechanism underlying wakefulness and sleep generation, including identification of several new brain regions controlling wakefulness and sleep, and revealing the mechanisms for the rhythmic and homeostatic regulation of sleep; ③the functions of sleep, that is, how to achieve body's homeostasis and memory information processing during sleep. In our views of point, the future study in wakefulness and sleep needs to make breakthroughs in the following aspects. First, how the cerebral neurons perceive and integrate the internal and external signals to achieve the circadian rhythmic and homeostatic regulation of sleep. Second, further studies are needed to clarify the regulatory effects of different cell subtypes on the wakefulness and sleep and to analyze their fine circuitry mechanism based on the new cell typing. Third, how different memory information is distinguished during sleep, and what are the unique roles of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and REM sleep in memory information processing.

Keywords

• wakefulness and sleep
• short sleep gene
• sleep-promoting glutamatergic neurons
• synaptic homeostasis
• memory information deletion