Spindles - a hallmark of stage II sleep - are a transient oscillatory phenomenon in the EEG believed to reflect thalamocortical activity contributing to unresponsiveness during sleep. Currently spindles are often classified into two classes: fast spindles, with a frequency of around 14 Hz, occurring in the centro-parietal region; and slow spindles, with a frequency of around 12 Hz, prevalent in...

The three dimensional organization of microtubules in mitotic spindles of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been determined by computer-aided reconstruction from electron micrographs of serially cross-sectioned spindles. Fifteen spindles ranging in length from 0.6-9.4 microns have been analyzed. Ordered microtubule packing is absent in spindles up to 0.8 micron, but the total number of mic...

Sleep spindles are rhythmic patterns of neuronal activity generated within the thalamocortical circuit. Although spindles have been hypothesized to protect sleep by reducing the influence of external stimuli, it remains to be confirmed experimentally whether there is a direct relationship between sleep spindles and the stability of sleep. We have addressed this issue by using in vivo photostimu...

New information has been obtained recently regarding microtubule organization in Xenopus extract spindles. These spindles assemble in vitro by chromatin-mediated microtubule nucleation and consist of randomly interspersed long and short microtubules with minus ends distributed throughout the spindle. Fluorescence speckle microscopy has led to the proposal that the Xenopus steady-state spindles ...

Muscle spindles in 2 synergistic avian skeletal muscles, the anterior (ALD) and posterior (PLD) latissimus dorsi, were studied by light and electron microscopy to determine whether morphological or quantitative differences existed between these sensory receptors. Differences were found in the density, distribution and location of muscle spindles in the 2 muscles. They also differed with respect...

Sleep spindles are bursts of rhythmic 10-15 Hz activity, lasting ∼0.5-2 s, that occur during Stage 2 sleep. They are coherent across multiple cortical and thalamic locations in animals, and across scalp EEG sites in humans, suggesting simultaneous generation across the cortical mantle. However, reports of MEG spindles occurring without EEG spindles, and vice versa, are inconsistent with synchro...

Mention glutamate secretion to most physiologists, even neuroscientists, and they'll think only of excitatory synaptic neurotransmission in the central nervous system. Although by far its best known function, evidence from last 15 years shows it is also vital for controlling peripheral mechanosensory terminal responsiveness, via autogenic excitation. In an article appearing a previous issue The...

While the interaction of the cardinal rhythms of non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep-the thalamo-cortical spindles, hippocampal ripples, and the cortical slow oscillations-is thought to be critical for memory consolidation during sleep, the role spindles play in this interaction is elusive. Combining optogenetics with a closed-loop stimulation approach in mice, we show here that only thalamic s...