A Good Night's Sleep

Speaking on the mechanisms of sleep, Dr. Cavanaugh came to the Loyola University Chicago’s Neuroscience Seminar to speak of the important influences of the circadian and homeostatic processing interacting in a complex way to insure that sleep occurs at optimal times. Though the sleep-cycle is heavily based on the circadian regulated behavior, the exact system controls of the cycle are not 100% known. There is the play of light-induced arousal signals and other cells that help shape the sleeping cycle, primarily through sleep inhibition.

In his study, Dr. Cavanaugh looked to determine how different times of day could possible affect the activation of certain neurons that can affect sleep in the brain. In experimentation flies were loaded into tubes that contained different nutrients that ranged from sucrose, agar and their movement were monitored and recorded by Drosophila Activity Monitoring system (DAMS) and then sleep analysis was performed with PySolo software. Working in his lab with Drosophila, the manipulation of “201y-GAL4 and UAS-dTrpA1”, helped maintain optimal sleep during the day.  Those two, along with other neurons helped Dr. Cavanaugh obtain better insight into the chemicals workings of the circadian rhythm, especially when two copies of the transgenes mentioned above were present. It was thus proposed that circadian cells normal control sleep timing by gating the ability of sleep-promoting brain regions to drive sleep, especially around the time of the day-night transition. Future studies may include other possible regions of the brain and different cells which may affect sleep-promoting attributes in the brain. However, for now Dr. Cavanaugh’s study in certain cells like 201y-GAL4 show a promising future for future research that has a lot of potential. 

Findings in Dr.Cavanaugh’s study includes important parallels that are found in the behavior of the human circadian rhythm system where it is optimal to drive wakefulness in the evening, to prevent sleep from prematurely occurring at a time when homeostatic sleep drive is high. With the seeming rise of cases of insomnia and other sleep maladies, there has been an exponentially increasing number of hypnotics over the recent years. Though there are many influences that effect one’s sleep cycle that include psychological illness like depression and anxiety, studies that Dr. Thomas Wehr conducted had parallel interests in the research on sleep and how certain chemical responses affects the homeostatic function of the circadian rhythm. With the introduction of artificial light, sleep has evolutionarily changed and our most natural sleep states and cycles have adapted and been compressed into shorter night times. Along with stress and other pressures of modern life today, there are many factors that effect the chemical switches in our body that look to maintain our circadian rhythms of sleep. Personally, I believe this is a field that one should look into with great analysis because sleep is pivotal to our wakeful and woken hours. Though the task is oven very complex considering the number of factors that can play into our sleep cycles, it is nonetheless pivotal because sleep allows us to maintain optimal levels of efficiency in the everyday things we do.

                 

                 

Picture Sources:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/05/dd/16/05dd163d41634e24be01ef4f8c888852.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/62/e7/10/62e7103032f9a27fea1c58ccf50c9473.jpg

Article Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14beha.html

Speaker:

Cavanaugh, Daniel J., Abigail S. Vigderman, Terry Dead, David S. Garbe, and Amita Sehgal. “The Drosophila Circadian Clock Gates Sleep through Time-of Day Dependent Modulation of Sleep- Promoting Neurons.” Sleep 39.2 (2016): 345-56. Web. 24 Feb.2017.