Recent animal studies have highlighted the essential role of brain cells called astrocytes in sleep policy. New research shows that triggering these cells can keep mice awake for prolonged periods without making them sleepier later. This finding might result in interventions that reduce the negative effects of prolonged wakefulness, potentially benefiting shift workers, first responders, and military workers.
The Role of Astrocytes in Sleep Regulation
New animal research recommends that little-studied brain cells called astrocytes are major gamers in managing sleep needs and may sooner or later assist humans go without sleep for longer without negative consequences such as psychological fatigue and impaired physical health.
Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the study found that activating these cells kept mice awake for hours when they would normally be resting, without making them any sleepier.
Current animal research studies have highlighted the vital function of brain cells called astrocytes in sleep regulation. In this research study, the researchers looked specifically at astrocytes in the basal forebrain, a brain region understood to play a crucial function in figuring out time spent asleep and awake as well as sleep requirements. Utilizing chemogenetics– an approach to study and manage signaling pathways within brain cells– they activated these astrocytes and found that this resulted in mice staying awake for 6 hours or more during their normal sleep duration. Whats more, the researchers did not see subsequent modifications in sleep time or sleep strength in response to the added wakefulness, as would be expected.
” Extended wakefulness generally increases sleep time and strength, but what we saw in this study was that in spite of hours of included wakefulness these mice did not differ from well-rested controls in terms of how long and how intensely they slept,” said senior author Marcos Frank, a neuroscientist and professor at the Washington State University Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. “This opens up the possibility that we might someday have interventions that could target astrocytes to alleviate the unfavorable consequences of extended wakefulness.”
Possible Applications for Shift Workers and Military
Frank visualized that may consist of medications that could be utilized to enhance the performance, safety, and health of shift workers and others who work long or odd hours, such as military workers and very first responders. Sleep loss and mistimed sleep have been shown to affect a variety of essential procedures, consisting of attention, cognition, discovering, memory, metabolic process, and immune function.
Astrocytes: More than Just Brain “Glue”.
Astrocytes are kinds of non-neuronal cells that engage with neurons, brain cells that transmit easily measured electrical signals from the brain to other parts of the body. Formerly believed of as simply the “glue” that holds the brain together, astrocytes have actually just recently been revealed to play an active function in different habits and processes through a far more difficult-to-measure and subtle process referred to as calcium signaling. This includes a previous WSU study that showed that suppressing astrocyte calcium signaling throughout the brain resulted in mice developing up less sleep requirement after sleep deprivation.
In this research study, the researchers looked particularly at astrocytes in the basal forebrain, a brain region known to play an important function in identifying time spent asleep and awake along with sleep requirements. Using chemogenetics– a method to study and manage signaling pathways within brain cells– they activated these astrocytes and discovered that this led to mice staying awake for 6 hours or more throughout their regular sleep period. Whats more, the researchers did not see subsequent changes in sleep time or sleep strength in response to the included wakefulness, as would be anticipated.
” Our findings recommend that our requirement for sleep isnt just a function of prior wake time however is likewise driven by these long-ignored non-neuronal cells,” stated first author Ashley Ingiosi, an assistant teacher of neuroscience at Ohio State University who conducted the study while working as a postdoctoral research study partner in Franks lab at WSU. “We can now start to identify how astrocytes communicate with nerve cells to trigger this action and how they drive the expression and regulation of sleep in different parts of the brain.”.
Future Research Directions.
Next, the researchers plan to conduct behavioral tests in mice to determine how triggering basal forebrain astrocytes to cause wakefulness might impact other processes besides sleep requirements, such as attention, cognition, learning, memory, metabolism, and immune function. To get at least some sign of the potential influence on attention and cognition, they looked at EEG markers of those 2 processes in this study and discovered them to be comparable to those seen in well-rested controls.
Referral: “Activation of Basal Forebrain Astrocytes Induces Wakefulness without Compensatory Changes in Sleep Drive” by Ashley M. Ingiosi, Christopher R. Hayworth and Marcos G. Frank, 8 August 2023, Journal of Neuroscience.DOI: 10.1523/ JNEUROSCI.0163-23.2023.
The research study was moneyed by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke..