Northwest Labs B103 and Zoom
http://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/NEU/dany.html
The How and Why of Sleep
Sleep is a fundamental biological process, and its disruption has profound impacts on human health. To identify neurons involved in sleep generation, we have performed whole-brain screening for sleep active and sleep promoting neurons, using a combination of optogenetics, electrophysiology, imaging, and gene expression profiling. We found that sleep is controlled by a highly distributed network spanning the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain, and the sleep neurons are part of the central somatic and autonomic motor circuits. To address the “why” question, we are now exploring how sleep interacts with the cardiovascular, immune, and neuroendocrine systems.