Study on a neuronal population essential for REM sleep and its involvement in Parkinson's disease

哺乳动物的睡眠由快速眼动(REM)睡眠和非快速眼动(NREM)睡眠组成，这两种睡眠在各种精神和神经疾病中都可以不同地受到影响。我最近发现，消融背外侧核(SLD)中的特定神经元群体会导致REM睡眠的显著丧失，这表明基因定义的神经元群体被发现对产生REM睡眠是必不可少的。在SLD神经元消融的小鼠中，经常可以观察到没有肌肉张力的REM睡眠，这让人想起帕金森病(PD)的REM睡眠行为障碍。此外，还发现了较低的焦虑和抑郁行为，这与之前的观察结果一致，即剥夺REM睡眠会产生类似焦虑和抗抑郁的效果。其次，我发现被消融的神经元群由不同百分比的GABA能神经元和谷氨酸能神经元组成。因此，这些结果为我们提供了更多关于帕金森病发病机制的信息，在此期间，α-突触核蛋白可能在SLD水平上积聚，产生各种运动和非运动症状。此外，SLD神经元的遗传学鉴定可能会导致PD新的诊断方法和治疗方法的发展。

Mammalian sleep is composed of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep, both of which can be compromised differentially in various psychiatric and neurological disorders. I recently found that ablation of a specific neuronal population in the sublaterodorsal nucleus (SLD) resulted in significant loss of REM sleep, suggesting a genetically defined neuronal population is discovered to be essential for generating REM sleep. In the SLD neuron-ablated mice, REM sleep without muscle atonia is frequently observed, reminiscent of REM sleep behavior disorder in Parkinson's disease (PD). Moreover, lower anxiety-like and lower depression-like behaviors are found, consistent with previous observations in which REM sleep deprivation produced anxiolytic-like and antidepressant-like effect. Next, I found that the ablated neuronal population are composed of both GABAergic and glutamatergic neurons with varied percentages. Therefore, these results provide us more information about the pathogenesis of PD, during which the alpha-synuclein accumulation may occur in the level of the SLD, producing various motor and non-motor symptoms. Furthermore, the genetic identification of SLD neurons may lead to the development of novel diagnostic methods and therapeutics for PD.