Develop as you sleep

Abstract

Early critical brain development occurs during sleep, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco report in the April issue of Neuron. Using a well-established model of neuronal plasticity ocular dominance alterations with monocular deprivation in kittens they have shown by electrophysiological recordings and optical imaging that even short-term sleep deprivation has dramatic effects. After six hours of visual experience through one eye, one-month-old kittens immediately showed a significant shift in ocular dominance toward the open eye. However, in animals allowed to sleep for six hours after the six hours of vision, the shift was almost twice as large and comparable to that observed with animals seeing through one eye for twelve hours. Furthermore, the degree of ocular dominance shift correlated with the amount of non-REM sleep experienced by the kittens. This report provides direct evidence that sleep, or lack of it, alters experience-dependent synaptic plasticity. L.O.