Sleep, Plasticity, and Conscious Experience
What We Do
Traditionally, sleep and wakefulness have been considered as two global, mutually exclusive states. However, this view has been challenged by the discovery that sleep and wakefulness are locally regulated and that islands of these two states may often coexist in the same individual. Importantly, the local regulation of sleep seems to be key for many of the known functions of this physiological state, including the maintenance of brain functional efficiency, the consolidation or stabilization of new memories and the modulation of mood and emotional reactivity. Local changes in brain activity during sleep may also explain the emergence of particular conscious experiences in the form of dreams, and may modulate the level of sensory disconnection that is essential for a restorative sleep. On the other hand, during wakefulness, the reiterated activation of specific brain areas may lead to a state of functional fatigue, characterized by the appearance of local, sleep-like episodes. These events seem to have important consequences for behavior and cognition and may contribute to explain the known effects of sleep loss. Given these premises, alterations in the local regulation of sleep and wakefulness may represent the pathophysiological basis for symptoms observed in many sleep disorders, but also in some psychiatric or neurological disorders.
ONGOING PROJECTS
The relationship between slow waves and conscious experience during sleep (ERC-funded project)
The behavioral and neural correlates of local sleep-like episodes during wakefulness (collaboration with University of Wisconsin)
The cortical and subcortical correlates of sleep slow waves and arousals (collaboration with UniMoRe and NIH)
The application of natural language processing to dream content analysis (BIAL-funded project) - click HERE for info
The anatomo-functional bases of sensory disconnection during sleep
Contact: giulio.bernardi@imtlucca.it
Who We Are
Interns, Guest Students, and Visiting Researchers
Christina Bikeskou
University of Athens, Neuroscience
Demetrio Grollero
University of Ancona, Neuroscience
Alumni
Laura Sophie Imperatori
PhD Student (2017-2020)
Elena Capriglia
Medicine Student (2018-2020)
Davide Bertelloni
Psychology Student (2019-2020)
Francesco Lomi
Psychology Student (2021-2022)
Kim Mi Lande
Neuroscience Student (2022)
Annkathrin Böke
Neuroscience Student (2022)
Marie Degrave
Neuroscience Student (2022)
Sıla Mutaf
Psychology Student (2022)
Niccolò Pampaloni
Neurobiology PostDoc (2022)
Flavia Petruso
Medicine Student (2020-2022)
Aurora Salina
Psychology Student (2022-2023)
Monica Di Giuliano
Psychology Student (2022-2023)
Aikaterini Athina Bougoulia
Psychology Student (2023)
Giorgia Procissi
Psychology Student (2023)
Lorenzo Meoli
Medicine Student (2023-2024)
Demetrio Grollero
PhD Student (2018-2024)
Research Positions
PhD Student Positions - Call Open
Title: Program in Cognitive, Computational and Social Neurosciences
Website: https://ccsn.imtlucca.it/
Deadline: June 21, 2024
Full description of the call: https://www.imtlucca.it/en/phd/information-for-students
What We Publish
Emotion regulation failures are preceded by local increases in sleep-like activity
Giulia Avvenuti, Davide Bertelloni, Giada Lettieri, Emiliano Ricciardi, Luca Cecchetti, Pietro Pietrini, Giulio BernardiJournal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2021. DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01753Cortical and subcortical hemodynamic changes during sleep slow waves in human sleep
Betta, Handjaras, Leo, Federici, Farinelli, Ricciardi, Siclari, Meletti, Ballotta, Benuzzi, Giulio BernardiNeuroImage, 2021. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118117Our Collaborations
Center for Sleep and Consciousness - Giulio Tononi and Brady Riedner - University of Wisconsin. Madison, WI-USA
Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche - Francesca Benuzzi and Stefano Meletti - Università di Modena e Reggio-Emilia. Modena, Italy
Brain and Sleep Research Laboratory - Michele Bellesi and Luisa De Vivo - University of Bristol. Bristol, UK
Donders Sleep & Memory Lab - Martin Dresler and Sarah Schoch - Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging. Nijmegen, Netherlands
Centre d’investigation et de recherche sur le sommeil - Raphael Heinzer - Lausanne University Hospital. Lausanne, Switzerland
EOC Neurocentro - Mauro Manconi and Anna Castelnovo - Istituto di Neuroscienze cliniche della Svizzera Italiana. Lugano, Switzerland
CNR-FTMG-Pisa - Michele Emdin and Nicola Vanello - Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica CNR. Pisa, Italy
What We Develop
Our Talks
Bernardi - Global and Local Brain Activity Patterns in Human REM Sleep and Their Relationship with Dream Experiences. Gordon Research Conference – Sleep Regulation and Function, Galveston, Texas, United States, 2024.
Bernardi - Local slow waves during wakefulness: an index of functional fatigue? GCongress of the Italian Society of Sleep Medicine, Milan, Italy, 2023.
Bernardi - Investigating the relationship between dreams and memories: old problems and new solutions. Congress of the Word Sleep Society, Rome, Italy, 2022.
Bergamo - Cortical hemodynamic changes associated with sleep slow waves in school-age children. Congress of the Word Sleep Society, Rome, Italy, 2022.
Bernardi - Brain networks underlying dream activity. Annual conference of the Italian Society of Psychophysiology (SIPF), Palermo, Italy, 2021.
Bernardi - Cortical and subcortical hemodynamic changes during human sleep slow waves. Annual conference of the Swiss Sleep Society (SSSSC), Solothurn, Switzerland, 2021.
Avvenuti - The corpus callosum is essential for the cross-hemispheric propagation of sleep slow waves: a high-density EEG study in totally callosotomized patients. Congress of the Word Sleep Society, Vancouver, Canada, 2019.