Sleep circuitry: linking homeostasis, sedation and stress

We sleep for 30% of our lives, but why we do remains a mystery. We will address several questions centred around sleep's restorative properties: what circuitries sense the inexorable drive to sleep when we are sleep deprived, and do sedative drugs hijack these natural restorative sleep pathways? Why do things feel better after a good night's sleep - how does sleep mitigate negative experiences? We will use the latest genetic, physiological and behavioural techniques with mice to identify the circuitries involved. Our work will aid understanding of feedback processes that sense the sleep drive, and identify whether drugs can be developed that provide natural sleep's restorative benefits; we will determine whether side-effects (e.g. hypothermia) of sedative drugs can be reduced. Finally, our discovery of sleep-promoting circuitry in the basal ganglia, which overlaps with circuitry that controls how we react to negative experiences, could allow new approaches to improve mental health.