OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
The detailed molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying NREM and REM sleep in mammals are elusive. To address these challenges, we constructed a mathematical model, Averaged Neuron Model (AN Model), which recapitulates the electrophysiological characteristics of the slow-wave sleep. Comprehensive bifurcation analysis predicted that a Ca2+-dependent hyperpolarization pathway may play a role in slow-wave sleep. To experimentally validate this prediction, we generate and analyze 26 KO mice, and found that impaired Ca2+-dependent K+ channels, voltage-gated Ca2+ channels, or Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent kinases (Camk2a and Camk2b) decrease sleep duration, while impaired plasma membrane Ca2+ ATPase increases sleep duration. Genetical and pharmacological intervention and whole-brain imaging validated that impaired NMDA receptors reduce sleep duration and directly increase the excitability of cells. Based on these results, we propose phosphorylation hypothesis of sleep that phosphorylation-dependent regulation of Ca2+-dependent hyperpolarization pathway underlies the regulation of sleep duration in mammals. In this talk, I will also present how we identify essential genes (Chrm1 and Chrm3) in REM sleep regulation as well as new projects on human sleep/wake cycle measurements for next-generation sleep medicine and on whole-body/brain profiling of cells in mammals.