A novel neural pathway linking visual input and sleep status

至少30%的成年人患有与睡眠有关的问题。睡眠中断会导致各种医学相关问题，包括心血管和神经精神功能障碍。环境光和视觉刺激会影响包括昆虫、鸟类、哺乳动物和人类在内的各种动物的睡眠数量和质量。尽管这种被广泛观察到的现象的生物学基础尚不清楚，但对果蝇的最新研究和技术进步，已经使识别潜在的神经机制成为可能。最近，我们已经证明了一种叫做神经钙素的基因是调节苍蝇视觉系统中神经元活动以保证夜间睡眠的必要条件。我们计划使用尖端的遗传、行为和成像技术来研究神经钙素如何与其他基因相互作用以控制神经元特性，并发现视觉系统与中枢大脑沟通以调节睡眠的神经通路。这个项目有望解决睡眠研究中一个重要的知识缺口。此外，神经钙素的人类同源物也在眼睛和大脑中表达。因此，这个项目的结果可能会让我们深入了解自然光和人造光相关的视觉刺激是如何影响和干扰人类睡眠的。

At least 30% of adults suffer sleep-related problems. Sleep disruption can contribute to a variety of medically-relevant problems, including cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric dysfunction. Environmental light and visual stimuli affect both sleep quantity and quality in various animals including insects, birds, mammals and humans. Although the biological basis of such a widely observed phenomenon remains unclear, the latest research and technical advances in the fruit fly, Drosophila, have made it feasible to identify the underlying neural mechanisms. Recently, we have demonstrated that a gene called Neurocalcin is required to modulate neuronal activities in the fly visual system for robust night-time sleep. We plan to use cutting-edge genetic, behavioural and imaging techniques to investigate how Neurocalcin interacts with other genes to control neuronal properties and discover the neural pathways that the visual system communicates with the central brain to regulate sleep. This project promises to address an important knowledge gap in sleep research. Moreover the human homologues of Neurocalcin are also expressed in the eyes and the brain. Therefore, the results from this project may provide insight into how natural and artificial light-related visual stimuli contribute to, and disturb, human sleep.