During brain homeostasis, both neurons and astroglia release ATP that is rapidly converted to adenosine in the extracellular space. Pannexin-1 (Panx1) hemichannels represent a major conduit of non-vesicular ATP release from brain cells. Previous studies have shown that Panx1-/- mice possess severe disruption of the sleep-wake cycle. Here, we review experimental data supporting the involvement o...

The wake-sleep cycle, a spontaneous succession of global brain states that correspond to major overt behaviors, occurs in all higher vertebrates. The transitions between these states, at once rapid and drastic, remain poorly understood. Here, intracranial local field potentials (LFPs) recorded in the cortex, hippocampus, striatum, and thalamus were used to characterize the neurophysiological co...

Adult mammals cycle between periods of sleep and wakefulness. Recent assessments of these cycles in humans and other mammals indicate that sleep bout durations exhibit an exponential distribution, whereas wake bout durations exhibit a power-law distribution. Moreover, it was found that wake bout distributions, but not sleep bout distributions, exhibit scale invariance across mammals of differen...

Vitamin B12 (VB12) was administered to two patients suffering for many years from different sleep-wake rhythm disorders. One patient was a 15-year-old blind girl suffering from a free-running sleep-wake rhythm (hypernychthemeral syndrome) with a period of about 25 h. In spite of repeated trials to entrain her sleep-wake cycle to the environmental 24-h rhythm, her free-running rhythm persisted f...

While the central window implementation in a superscalar processor is an effective approach to waking up ready instructions, this implementation does not scale to large instruction window sizes as those that are required by wide issue superscalars of the future. We propose a new wake-up algorithm that dynamically associates explicit wake-up lists with executing instructions according to the dep...

In mammals Orexin-A and -B are neuropeptides involved in the hypothalamic regulation of diverse physiological functions including food intake and the sleep-wake cycle. This generalisation was investigated in meat-(broiler) and layer-type juvenile domestic chickens by immunocytochemical localisation of orexin A/B in the hypothalamus, and by measurements of hypothalamic hypocretin mRNA which enco...

School of Medicine scientists have identified a brain circuit that’s indispensable to the sleep-wake cycle. This same circuit is also a component of the reward system, an archipelago of interconnected brain clusters crucial to promoting behavior necessary for animals, including humans, to survive and reproduce. It makes intuitive sense that the reward system, which motivates goaldirected behavi...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of exogenous melatonin on the frequency of wet nights, on the sleep-wake cycle, and on the melatonin profile in children with therapy-resistant MNE. PATIENTS AND METHODS 24 patients were included. Patients had to maintain a diary including time of sleep and arousal, and whether they had a dry or a wet bed in the morning. We measured baseline melatonin profile...