New animal research suggests that little-studied brain cells known as astrocytes are major players in controlling sleep need and may someday help humans go without sleep for longer without negative consequences such as mental fatigue and impaired physical health. The study found that activating these cells kept mice awake for hours when they would normally be resting, without making them any sleepier. The researchers said their findings open up the possibility of future interventions that could target astrocytes to mitigate the negative consequences of prolonged wakefulness. which would benefit the productivity, safety, and health of shift workers and others who work long or odd hours.
New animal research suggests that little-studied brain cells known as astrocytes are major players in controlling sleep need and may someday help humans go without sleep for longer without negative consequences such as mental fatigue and impaired physical health., the study found that activating these cells kept mice awake for hours when they would normally be resting, without making them any sleepier.
Frank envisioned that might include medications that could be used to improve the productivity, safety and health of shift workers and others who work long or odd hours, such as first responders and military personnel. Sleep loss and mistimed sleep have been shown to impact a variety of key processes, including attention, cognition, learning, memory, metabolism and immune function.
In this study, the researchers looked specifically at astrocytes in the basal forebrain, a brain region known to play a critical role in determining time spent asleep and awake as well as sleep need. Using chemogenetics -- a method to control and study signaling pathways within brain cells -- they activated these astrocytes and found that this resulted in mice staying awake for 6 hours or more during their normal sleep period.
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