Abstract:
The transition from wakefulness to sleep requires a striking alteration in brain activity and behavior. Animals shift from actively responding to and interacting with the environment to a quiescent state in which they are less responsive to the environment and their brain activity shows different oscillatory patterns. How do animals achieve this remarkable wake-to-sleep transition? Prior to sleep onset, animals ranging from bees to humans display a stereotypic repertoire of behaviors. These include finding a safe location, performing hygiene-related behaviors, preparing a space in which to sleep, and adopting a sleeping posture. It has been suggested that the pre-sleep phase is a transitional phase in which engaging in a specific behavioral repertoire de-arouses the brain and facilitates the transition from wakefulness to sleep, yet causal evidence for this premise is lacking. In this talk, I will describe our lab’s recent work to fill this knowledge gap.