A role of prefrontal cortico-hypothalamic projections in wake promotion

Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)(2023)

Cited 4|Views34
No score
Abstract
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) processes many critical brain functions, such as decision-making, value-coding, thinking, and emotional arousal/recognition, but whether vmPFC plays a role in sleep-wake promotion circuitry is still unclear. Here, we find that photoactivation of dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH)-projecting vmPFC neurons, their terminals, or their postsynaptic DMH neurons rapidly switches non-rapid eye movement (NREM) but not rapid eye movement sleep to wakefulness, which is blocked by photoinhibition of DMH outputs in lateral hypothalamus (LHs). Chemoactivation of DMH glutamatergic but not GABAergic neurons innervated by vmPFC promotes wakefulness and suppresses NREM sleep, whereas chemoinhibition of vmPFC projections in DMH produces opposite effects. DMH-projecting vmPFC neurons are inhibited during NREM sleep and activated during wakefulness. Thus, vmPFC neurons innervating DMH likely represent the first identified set of cerebral cortical neurons for promotion of physiological wakefulness and suppression of NREM sleep.
More
Translated text
Key words
ventromedial prefrontal cortex,dorsomedial hypothalamus,NREM sleep,wakefulness,top-down control of wakefulness
AI Read Science
Must-Reading Tree
Example
Generate MRT to find the research sequence of this paper
Chat Paper
Summary is being generated by the instructions you defined