Single unit activity of mouse pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus neurons involved in paradoxical (rapid eye movement) sleep generation

Kazuya Sakai

doi:10.15761/tbr.1000119

Abstract

Single unit activity of mouse pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus neurons involved in paradoxical (rapid eye movement) sleep generation

Highlights

Pharmacological, brain lesioning, and electrophysiological studies in the cat have demonstrated that the dorsolateral mesopontine tegmentum contains several key structures responsible for the initiation and maintenance of wakefulness (W) and/or paradoxical sleep (PS), known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
I have proposed that the mouse sublaterodorsal tegmental nucleus (SubLDT) is homologous to the cat peri-locus coeruleus alpha playing a pivotal role in PS generation [14] and that mouse PSon neurons play an important role in the mechanisms underlying the induction, maintenance, and cessation of PS, as well as its major tonic and phasic signs, such as muscle atonia, rhythmic theta waves, and cardiac activity, while slow-wave (or non-REM) sleep (SWS)/PS-on neurons may play an important role in both the induction of SWS and maintenance of both SWS and PS [14]
Previous anatomical studies in the rat have demonstrated that the laterodorsal tegmental nucleus (LDT), SubLDT, and pedunculopontine tegmental (PPT) all contain distinct populations of cholinergic, glutamatergic, and GABAergic neurons [18,29]

Summary

Introduction

Brain lesioning, and electrophysiological studies in the cat have demonstrated that the dorsolateral mesopontine tegmentum contains several key structures responsible for the initiation and maintenance of wakefulness (W) and/or paradoxical sleep (PS), known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Mouse PS-on neurons are all characterized by a biphasic action potential, none displaying the triphasic broad action potential that is a characteristic of cholinergic neurons [13,14] These findings are not consistent with those of our previous studies in the cat reporting the presence of possibly cholinergic and non-cholinergic PS-on neurons in the dorsal pontine tegmentum [20,21,22]. I report, for the first time, that the mouse PPT contains presumed cholinergic PS-on and W/PS-selective neurons and that they may play an important role in the induction, maintenance, and cessation of PS, and its major tonic and phasic phenomena, such as brain activation, rhythmic theta waves, and phasic electrical potentials in the cortical EEG

Experimental Procedures

Findings

Discussion