Hypothalamic feed-forward inhibition of thalamocortical network controls arousal and consciousness

During non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, synchronous synaptic activity in the thalamocortical network generates predominantly low-frequency oscillations (<4 Hz) that are modulated by inhibitory inputs from the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN). Whether TRN cells integrate sleep-wake signals from subcortical circuits remains unclear. We found that GABA neurons from the lateral hypothalamus (LHGABA) exert a strong inhibitory control over TRN GABA neurons (TRNGABA). We found that optogenetic activation of this circuit recapitulated state-dependent changes of TRN neuron activity in behaving mice and induced rapid arousal during NREM, but not REM, sleep. During deep anesthesia, activation of this circuit induced sustained cortical arousal. In contrast, optogenetic silencing of LHGABA-TRNGABA transmission increased the duration of NREM sleep and amplitude of delta (1–4 Hz) oscillations. Collectively, these results demonstrate that TRN cells integrate subcortical arousal inputs selectively during NREM sleep and may participate in sleep intensity.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Nature Neuroscience

• Publication date

  2015-12-21

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/nn.4209PMID 26691833PMCID 5818272
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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