Subcortical Mechanisms of Unihemispheric Sleep in the Fur Seal

海豚表现出一种不寻常的睡眠形式，称为单半球慢波睡眠（USWS），在这种睡眠中，典型的脑电波一次只出现在大脑皮层的一半。他们在任何时候都不会表现出快速眼动睡眠。这个实验室和他们的合作者发现，当海狗在陆地上时，它们既有双侧睡眠，也有快速眼动睡眠，类似于人类和所有其他陆地哺乳动物的睡眠。然而，当海狗一年中有6个月待在水中时，它们会像海豚一样有USWS和很少或根本没有快速眼动睡眠。因此，海狗的睡眠行为提供了一个独特的机会来确定睡眠的脑电波是如何产生的，以及为什么尽管所有其他哺乳动物都有快速眼动睡眠，但当USWS发生时，这种状态不存在或大大减少。为了回答这些问题，该项目将专注于皮层以下发生的变化，确定在各种清醒和睡眠状态下皮层下区域释放的神经递质的性质。预计这将导致对“我们为什么睡觉”和“我们为什么做梦”这两个神经科学中最重要的未解之谜的根本的新理解。三名研究生将在此项目中获得培训并完成博士学位。该项目代表了俄罗斯海洋哺乳动物机构与美国、日本、南非和瑞士的实验室之间的国际合作模式。俄罗斯海洋哺乳动物机构是目前世界上唯一一个拥有研究海洋哺乳动物睡眠的设施和专业知识的地方。该奖项由美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

Dolphins display an unusual form of sleep called unihemispheric slow wave sleep (USWS), in which brain waves typical of sleep appear in only one half of the cortex at a time. They do not exhibit rapid eye movement (REM) sleep at any time. This laboratory and their collaborators have found that when fur seals are on land they have both bilateral sleep, and REM sleep resembling the sleep seen in humans and all other land mammals. However, when fur seals are in water, their home for 6 months of the year, they have USWS and little or no REM sleep, like dolphins. Therefore, the sleep behavior of fur seals provides a unique opportunity to determine how the brain waves of sleep are generated and why, although all other mammals have REM sleep, this state is absent or greatly reduced when USWS occurs. To answer these questions, the project will focus on the changes going on below the cortex, determining the nature of the neurotransmitters that are released in subcortical regions during the various waking and sleep states. It is expected that this will lead to fundamental new understandings of "why we sleep" and "why we dream," two of the most important unanswered questions in neuroscience. Three graduate students will be trained and will complete their Ph.D.s during this project. This project represents a model international collaboration between a Russian marine mammal facility that is currently the only place in the world with the facilities and expertise to study sleep in marine mammals and laboratories in the USA, Japan, South Africa and Switzerland. This award is co-funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering.