Sleep, Plasticity, and Conscious Experience

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 (supported by an ERC-STG) - click HERE for info

• The application of natural language processing to dream content analysis (supported by multiple grants) - click HERE for info

• The behavioral and neural correlates of local sleep-like episodes during wakefulness

• The cortical and subcortical correlates of sleep slow waves and arousals

• The anatomo-functional bases of sensory disconnection during sleep

Contact: giulio.bernardi@imtlucca.it

Interns, Guest Students, and Visiting Researchers

PhD Student Positions - Call Open

• Title: Neuroscience, Experimental Psychology, and Psychophysiology

• Website: https://mbht.imtlucca.it/how-to-apply_1

• Deadline: June 30, 2025

• Full description of the call: https://www.imtlucca.it/en/phd/information-for-students

• 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

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.