Physiology of Sleep: Allard Flashcards
What is sleep?
a naturally occurring state of reduced or absent consciousness
a state of dramatically lowered sensory perception and absence of voluntary motor function that is easily reversed by sensory stimuli
What is the stage of sleep where you are pretty conscious?
REM sleep (rapid eye movement) where you are aware of feelings and internal environment
lucid dreaming: you’re in your dream world, you know you are dreaming but you stay asleep because you know you can do things you will never doing real life; done in the younger brain
All mammals sleep. The amount of time they spend in sleep varies.
giraffe: 2 hours
brown: bat 20 hours
humans: 8-9 hours
What is sleep important for? What is the evidence of the importance of sleep?
- all mammals do it
- even the dolphin, which moves continuously, shows “unihemispheric sleep” where one hemipshere is asleep but the other one is active (they do not have REM sleep)
- humans experience rebound sleep after a deprivation period (you body will make you sleep if you have deprived yourself of it by sleeping 2-3 hours a day even if you are driving)
- if you deprive rats, flies, and cockroaches of sleep, they will actually die; prolonged sleep deprivation has been shown to kill rats, flies, and cockroaches
- most psychiatric conditions are associated with sleep abnormalities
- humans with genetic insomnia have increased mortality rate (fatal familial insomnia kills within 18 months of symptom onset); usually starts in middle age they can’t sleep and eventually die (hallucination, unregulated hormones)
What are the theories on sleep function?
growth and development:
- newborns sleep 20 hours/day
- during deep sleep, the pituitary gland releases growth hormone
restoration and repair (sleep is important for immune system):
- sleep deprivation results in depressed immune system (you get a cold pretty quickly after studying for exams)
- decreases insulin sensitivity
- impairs thought and judgment
- impairs motor performance
memory consolidation:
-sleep deprivation results in severe memory impairment (if you sleep you can remember stuff you already learned)
What are the areas of the brain that regulate sleep? What is arousal? What area in the brain is responsible for keeping us awake, conscious, alert, and aware of our environment?
neurons in the brainstem called the reticular formation (don’t confuse with the reticular nucleus of the thalamus)
The reticular formation is made up of what kind of projections? Where does it extend and where does it project to?
- involves ascending and descending projections (somatosensory pathways, pathways to cerebellum for motor control, etc.)
- extends from the rostral midbrain to the caudal medulla
- projects to the thalamus, hypothalamus, limbic system, cerebellum, spinal cord and entire cerebral cortex
What are other functions of the reticular formation besides control of arousal and consciousness?
-control of arousal and consciousness through the reticular activating system
-control of movement through connections with spinal cord and cerebellum
and reticulospinal tracts
-modulates transmission of pain information
-filters sensory input
-modulates autonomic reflex activity
What type of neurons are found in the reticular formation?
substantia nigra: dopaminergic neurons (degenerate in PD)
- cholinergic cells
- lateral dorsal tegmental and peduncular pontine nucleus
- locus coeruleus (the biggest source of norepinephrine in our body)
- nuclei of raphe (bundle of different nuclei that go from pons to upper medulla)
all of these cells are grouped together and called the nucleus of the reticular formation
What do we call the group of ascending axons in the reticular formation?
reticular activating system
What neurons does the reticular activating system consist of? Describe the neurocircuitry of arousal.
- cholinergic projections from the midbrain reticular formation (MRF)
- noradrenergic projections from locus coeruleus (LC)
- serotonergic projections from raphe nuclei (RN)
- dopaminergic projections from the substantia nigra (SN)
- cholinergic neurons from nucleus basalis (BN) of the basal forebrain (one of the first cells to degenerate in Alzheimer’s dz)
- histaminergic neurons from the tuberomammilary nucleus (TMN) (in the posterior hypothalmus, histamine arouses us as anti-histamines make us sleepy)
- orexinergic/hypocretin neurons from the lateral hypothalamus (LH)
The neurons just described, what happens to them when an individual goes to sleep and who performs the action?
they need to be turned off in order to sleep
neurons secreting GABA and galanin from the ventrolateral preoptic area/nucleus (VLPO) inhibit the RAS to initiate sleep
so they essentially inhibit all those arousal neurons of the reticular activating system
What is the role of adenosine?
- has sleep inducing effects (drowsiness/sleepiness)
- is thought to be an indication of energy consumption by the brain
- adenosine is the A in ATP
- tends to build up a lot in the basal forebrain
- endogenous adenosine levels in the basal forebrain increase during wakefulness and decreases during recovery sleep
- caffeine blocks the adenosine receptors
What is the role of nucleus of accumbens?
GABAergic neurons with a high density of adenosine receptors in the nucleus accumbens are activated by adenosine which will inhibit the arousal centers
caffeine blocks these adenosine receptors in the nucleus accumbens
What regulates the VLPO?
it gets activated and inhibits all of the arousal nuclei
Which nucleus regulates with the circadian rhythm of sleep? Where is it located?
suprachiasmatic nucleus
- located in the anterior hypothalamus
- cells have an endogenous rhythm (biological clock)
-it gets entrained by light (so when you go to other time zone you won’t be completely messed up)
How is the suprachiasmatic nucleus entrained?
- suprachiasmatic nucleus is entrained by signals originating from light detected by the ganglion
- ganglion cells of the retina contain the photopigment melanopsin which is most sensitive to blue light; these are not the same one associated with your visual pathway
- it is also entrained by melatonin hormone
Sleep and wake patterns occur with what circadian periodicity in humans?
roughly 24 hours
What are the functions of the suprachiasmatic nucleus?
-function as a biological clock that governs many circadian rhythms of the body
What are input and output projections of the suprachiasmatic nucleus?
- receives direct projections from the retina which entrains it to periods of daylight
- contains ~20,000 neurons with genetically controlled molecular clocks (heterogeneous population of cells; wide variety of neurotransmitters)
- projects to the locus coeruleus and ventrolateral preoptic nucleus (VLPO)
Suprachiasmatic nucleus contains numerous receptors for this?
melatonin receptors
-suprachiasmatic nucleus is tuned by melatonin
Where is melatonin secreted from?
pineal gland
What allows melatonin to diffuse easily through most cell membranes including the blood brain barrier?
its high lipid and water solubility
What are the levels of melatonin during the day and night time?
low levels of melatonin in the daytime (light periods)
high levels of melanting in the nighttime (dark periods)
Describe the pathway of axons from the suprachiasmatic nucleus to the pineal gland.
it is not a straightforward pathway
Retino-hypothalamo-pineal pathway
light comes into the retina; special ganglion cells project to the SCN
-melanopsin containing ganglion cells stimulate suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)
-SCN sends inhibitory projections to paraventricular nucleus (PVN)
-PVN axons descend to intermediolateral cell column with the neurons in the lateral horn (which is part of the preganglionic sympathetic neurons)
-preganglionic neurons project to superior cervical ganglion
-Superior cervical ganglion cells project to the pineal gland
-pineal gland secretes melatonin
-melatonin reaches SCN via blood
What inhibits the retino-hypothalamo-pineal pathway?
LIGHT
- when there is light there is no synthesis of melatonin from the pineal gland as SCN sends inhibitory projections to paraventricular nucleus (PVN); once PVN is inhibited everything else behind it is inhibited
- no stimulation of pineal gland and thus no production of melatonin
When you’re stressed your sympathetic system is overactive and you have a hard time falling asleep. Why is this?
there is opportunity for anything that impacts our cervical sympathetic system to impact the secretion and synthesis of melatonin
What are the functions of melatonin?
- Melatonin generation by the pineal gland, which peaks during the nighttime hours, induces physiological changes that promote sleep, such as decreased body temperature and respiration rate. During the day, melatonin levels are low because large amounts of light are detected by the retina.
- melatonin can help regulate the secretion of other hormones
- it will also impact the SCN which also has a lot of receptors