cortex, the team’s findings suggest that the axons in memory centers of the hippocampus play a role.
The University of California, Irvine’s biomedical engineering researchers have discovered a previously unidentified source of two important brain waves necessary for deep sleep: slow waves and sleep spindles. While it was previously thought that these waves came from a single brain circuit connecting the thalamus and cortex, the team’s research indicates that the axons in the memory centers of the hippocampus also contribute.published today in Scientific Reports, indicate that axons in the hippocampus’s memory centers may play a role. The study, led by UC Irvine, found a new source of slow waves and sleep spindles within the hippocampus, measured through single axon recordings. This reveals that these brain waves can originate from axons in the cornu ammonis 3 region of the hippocampus. For years, slow waves and sleep spindles have been known as important components of deep sleep, measured through electroencephalography recordings on the scalp.The occurrence of changes in voltage during deep sleep happens independently of the activity of neurons, which challenges the current theories about how these brain waves are generated. “Our research has revealed an aspect of deep sleep brain activity that was previously unrecognized,” explained Mengke Wang, the lead author of the study. Wang, a former undergraduate student at UC Irvine in biomedical engineering who is now a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, conducted the study while at UC Irvine. “We have found that the hippocampus, which is usually linked to memory formation, plays a crucial role in producing slow waves and sleep spindles. This provides new insights into how these brain waves support memory.””The team used advanced methods such as in vitro reconstructions of different parts of the hippocampus and microfluidic tunnels for communication between single axons to study spontaneous spindle waves in isolated hippocampal neurons. These results indicate that spindle oscillations come from active ion channels within axons, rather than through volume conduction as previously believed.”
“The finding of spindle oscillations in individual hippocampal axons provides new opportunities for understanding the processes involved in memory consolidation during sleep,” stated co-author Gregory Brewer, adjunct professor of biom.Medical engineering. “These results have important implications for the field of sleep research, potentially leading to new methods for treating sleep-related disorders.”
Brewer is also affiliated with the Institute for Memory Impairment and Neurological Disorders and the Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.
By discovering the hippocampus’s involvement in producing slow waves and sleep spindles, this study enhances our knowledge of the brain’s activity during deep sleep and its effects on memory formation. The findings provide a hopeful basis for future research investigating the therapeutic possibilities of t
Improving the quality of sleep and cognitive function by targeting hippocampal activity.
William Tang, Bryce Mander, and Samuel Lassers collaborated with Brewer and Wang on this study and received financial support from the UCI Foundation.
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