Studies in anesthetized animals implicate nonserotonergic cells in the ventromedial medulla (VMM) in opioid modulation of nociceptive transmission but do not reveal the conditions that engage VMM cells in unanesthetized rats. The few studies of VMM cells in unanesthetized rats show that VMM cells change their discharge across the sleep-wake cycle and during active movements. Since active moveme...

Animals continuously alternate between sleep and wake states throughout their life. The daily organization of sleep and wakefulness is orchestrated by circadian, homeostatic, and motivational processes. Over the last decades, much progress has been made toward determining the neuronal populations involved in sleep/wake regulation. Here, we will discuss how the application of advanced in vivo to...

RATIONALE Exogenous serotonin at the hypoglossal motor nucleus (HMN) stimulates genioglossus (GG) muscle activity. However, whether endogenous serotonin contributes to GG activation across natural sleep-wake states has not been determined, but is relevant given that serotonergic neurons have decreased activity in sleep and project to pharyngeal motoneurons. OBJECTIVES To determine the role of...

Nonlinear responses to a transversely oscillating cylinder in the wake of a stationary upstream cylinder are studied theoretically by using an immersed-boundary method at Re=100. Response states are investigated in the three flow regimes for a tandem-cylinder system: the “vortex suppression” regime, the critical spacing regime, and the “vortex formation” regime. When the downstream cylinder is ...

Sleep/wake disturbance is a feature of almost all common age-related neurodegenerative diseases. Although the reason for this is unknown, it is likely that this inability to maintain sleep and wake states is in large part due to declines in the number and function of wake-active neurons, populations of cells that fire only during waking and are silent during sleep. Consistent with this, many of...

A flying aircraft disturbs the local atmosphere through which it flies creating a turbulent vortex at each wing tip known as a wake vortex. These vortices can persist for several minutes and endanger other aircraft traversing that turbulent airspace; large vortices are essentially invisible horizontal tornadoes and are a grave threat to smaller aircraft, especially during landing and take off. ...

The aim of this study was to examine the validity of activity-based monitoring (actigraphy) for the assessment of sleep-wake patterns during the 1st year of life. Forty-one infants were directly observed for sleep-wake state determination by trained observers. Concomitant activity data obtained by actigraphs attached to the infants’ ankles during the observation were matched on a minute-by-minu...

Increasing evidence suggests that cortical dynamics during wake exhibits long-range temporal correlations suitable to integrate inputs over extended periods of time to increase the signal-to-noise ratio in decision making and working memory tasks. Accordingly, sleep has been suggested as a state characterized by a breakdown of long-range correlations. However, detailed measurements of neuronal ...

Recent work in experimental neurophysiology has identified distinct neuronal populations in the rodent brain stem and hypothalamus that selectively promote wake and sleep. Mutual inhibition between these cell groups has suggested the conceptual model of a sleep-wake switch that controls transitions between wake and sleep while minimizing time spent in intermediate states. By combining wake- and...

The perifornical lateral hypothalamic area (PF-LHA) has been implicated in the control of several waking behaviours, including feeding, motor activity and arousal. Several cell types are located in the PF-LHA, including projection neurons that contain the hypocretin peptides (also known as orexins). Recent findings suggest that hypocretin neurons are involved in sleep-wake regulation. Loss of h...