ショウジョウバエ脳における睡眠状態依存的感覚情報処理とメカニズムの解明

我们一直在努力建立一种装置，在这种装置中，嗅觉回路可以在显微镜下成像，同时监测苍蝇的行为并检测它何时睡着。我们还设计了一种苍蝇品系，在这种品系中，我们可以同时诱导睡眠和监测神经活动。对这些果蝇的行为进行了检查，发现在617 nm红光照射下，果蝇变得静止，当光线关闭时，它们又变得活跃起来。这些实验证实，这种光遗传工具可以被用来作为“睡眠开关”，通过激活苍蝇大脑中的特定神经元来短暂地诱导睡眠。然后，我们使用钙成像技术检查了这些神经元的活动，并证实在红光暴露期间神经活动增加。在测试睡眠的同时，我们还开始记录大脑对不同气味的反应，使我们能够为未来的睡眠和睡眠剥夺实验优化我们的成像设置。我们希望我们的研究将为睡眠如何影响感觉处理提供基本的见解。由于许多研究表明果蝇的睡眠与人类和其他动物的睡眠有许多相似之处，我们在这里发现的睡眠的任何神经机制和功能都可能在其他动物身上保留下来。

We have made efforts toward building a set up in which olfactory circuits can be imaged under the microscope while simultaneously monitoring the fly’s behavior and detecting when it is asleep. We have also engineered a fly strain in which we can simultaneously induce sleep and monitor neural activity. The behavior of these flies was examined and it was found that upon exposure to 617nm red-light, the flies become quiescent, and when the light is switched off they become active again. These experiments confirm that this optogenetic tool can be used as a ‘sleep switch’ to transiently induce sleep by activating specific neurons in the fly brain. We then examined the activity of these neurons using calcium imaging, and confirmed that neural activity is increased during red light exposure. In parallel to testing sleep, we have also begun to record brain responses to different odors, allowing us to optimize our imaging settings for future sleep and sleep deprivation experiments.We expect our study will provide fundamental insights into how sleep affects sensory processing. Since a number of studies have shown that sleep in the fruit fly, Drosophila, shares many similarities with sleep in humans and other animals, any of the neural mechanisms and functions of sleep that we uncover here will likely be conserved in other animals.