|
| NATURE SCIENCE UPDATE Thursday 27 April 2000
brain : Sweet dreams are made of these
DAVID ADAM
Nerve cells that help determine why you have a hard day's night
while I'm only sleeping are identified this week. The discovery
of sleep-promoting neurons in slices of rat brain could help us
to understand and treat sleep disorders.
A brain region called the 'ventrolateral preoptic nucleus' (VLPO)
wakes up when we snooze - two thirds of its neurons fire during
sleep. Now Michel Mühlethaler at the Centre Medical Universitaire,
Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues report that two out of every
three neurons in the VLPO show striking similarities, and that
hormones produced when we are awake inhibit their activity. They
conclude in Nature1, that these cells must help us to sleep.
This finding could prove crucial for future exploration of the
land of Nod. "These cells represent an extremely homogenous population,"
Mühlethaler says. "One can thus visualize what a sleep-promoting
neuron looks like. This opens the door for the in vitro study
of the mechanisms which lead to sleep."
Full text: http://helix.nature.com/nsu/000427/000427-8.html
|
|
