14 DAY TRIAL // A group of scientists has just published the first systematic review of the genetic changes that take place in the brains of people who suffer from persisting sleep deprivation, and the results are very interesting.
The work has already received praise for its potential in helping improve the understanding and management of various side-effects that this condition has on the human body.
Investigators based at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and SRI International were behind the review, details of which appear in the latest issue of the esteemed journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
The paper, called Molecular and anatomical signatures of sleep deprivation in the mouse brain, was funded by the US Department of the Army and the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Science Blog reports.
During the investigation, the research team produced high-detailed maps of gene expression in the brains of unsuspecting mice. The rodents are often times used as proxies for humans in such studies.
The group looked at how gene activity changed between five main behavioral conditions, which included sleeping, waking and sleep deprivation. Each of these conditions is regulated by a batch of around 220 genes, the scientists reveal.
Using a technique called DNA microarray analysis, the collaboration also looked at seven key areas of the brain, in an attempt to gain more insight into the effects of sleep deprivation.
“Although most people experience occasional sleep deprivation and recognize its impact on their mood and behavior, there is little scientific understanding of how sleep loss actually affects brain function,” explains researcher Thomas Kilduff, PhD.
“This pioneering study documents how extending wakefulness affects gene expression in specific brain regions and describes a ‘molecular anatomical signature’ of sleep deprivation,” says the expert.
“Our findings may contribute to treatments that will help improve sleep quality and reduce problems arising from sleep deprivation,” adds Kilduff, the senior director of the SRI International Center for Neuroscience.
In the study, sleep deprivation was found to have important effects in the forebrain, where a large majority of neurons exhibited adverse side-effects.
The most significant regions of the brain that were affected included the neocortex, the amygdala (which regulates the body's fight or flight response) and the hippocampus, an area that processes higher cognitive functions and memory.
“These data illustrate the complex and dynamic relationship between sleep and sleep deprivation, neuroanatomical pathways and gene expression,” argues Ed Lein, PhD.
“The breadth and level of detail provided by these data will be a unique resource for the scientific community, and to that end we have made the data set publicly available online in its entirety,” he adds.
Lein is the senior director of neuroscience at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and he was also the senior author of the new research paper.