The Neural Mechanism for Sleep Initiation in the Mammalian Brain

Many areas of the brain have been implicated in the sleep cycle, but a holistic picture of their involvement is hard, if not impossible, to find. This paper is meant to summarize in relevant detail the major players in sleep initiation in the mammalian brain. The major players in sleep were broken into two categories: sleep-agonists and sleep-antagonists. The sleep-agonist areas are the median pre-optic nucleus, the ventrolateral pre-optic nucleus, and the Pineal Gland; the sleep-antagonist areas are the raphé nucleus, the locus coeruleus, the perifornical lateral hypothalamus, and the tuberomammillary nucleus. Also included in the paper are introductions to sleep and general neural mechanisms; information on Narcolepsy, Hypersomnia, and Insomnia; and a description of the typical American sleep lab.