The Sleep Mystery: The Molecular Centers That Regulate Deep Sleep

Healthy sleep is a basic physiological need

However, the deep restorative sleep required to consistently achieve optimal physical health and cognitive performance can be difficult due to life>

One of the most perplexing questions in sleep biology is how the brain regulates deep sleep

Now, a newly published study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School at the VA Boston Health Care System provides key clues to this longstanding mystery

The team focused on neurons in the thalamus, an area of ​​the brain responsible for regulating functions such as sleep and wakefulness

If replicated in further animal models, these findings could lay the groundwork for designing therapeutics targeting this protein to induce deep sleep

New treatments are urgently needed

"We believe our findings lay the groundwork for the development of a new class of sleep drugs that can enhance the maintenance of deep sleep by enhancing delta wave oscillations," added Basheer, who with colleague Ritchie Brown Leading the study, he is an associate professor of psychiatry at HMS

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Downregulation of the GABAA alpha3 subunit in thalamic reticular neurons enhances deep sleep in mice