Researchers Identify Brain Circuit Indispensable to Sleep-Wake Cycle
Scientists from Stanford University School of Medicine have identified the brain circuit that is responsible in regulating the body’s circadian rhythm. They also found that it serves as a key component of the reward system which plays an important role in promoting behaviour necessary for animals, including humans, to survive and reproduce.
"This has potential huge clinical relevance," said da Eban-Rothschild, PhD., a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University and the lead author of the study.
"Insomnia, a multibillion-dollar market for pharmaceutical companies, has traditionally been treated with drugs such as benzodiazepines that non-specifically shut down the entire brain. Now we see the possibility of developing therapies that, by narrowly targeting this newly identified circuit, could induce much higher-quality sleep."
The researchers found that the hormone dopamine has a crucial role in powering up this brain circuitry.
"Since many reward-circuit-activating drugs such as amphetamines that work by stimulating dopamine secretion also keep users awake, it’s natural to ask if dopamine plays a key role in the sleep-wake cycle as well as in reward," Eban-Rothschild explained. "But, in part due to existing technical limitations, earlier experimental literature has unearthed little evidence for the connection and, in fact, has suggested that this circuit probably wasn’t so important."
In the past, it has been found that dopamine stimulates goal-directed behaviours such as food- and sex-seeking". This is the first study to show that inhibiting the circuit could induce at least one complex behaviour which is essential in preparing the body for sleep.
"We have plenty of drugs that counter dopamine," Eban-Rothschild said.
"Perhaps giving a person the right dose, at just the right time, of a drug with just the right pharmacokinetic properties so its effect will wear off at the right time would work a lot better than bombarding the brain with benzodiazepines, such as Valium, that knock out the entire brain."
Their study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Source of this article:
VTA dopaminergic neurons regulate ethologically relevant sleep–wake behaviours
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