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 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)
The relationship between slow waves and conscious experiences in sleep (collaboration with University of Lausanne)
The anatomo-functional bases of sensory disconnection during sleep
Who We Are
Past Members: Laura Sophie Imperatori
Research Positions
Post-Doc Position
Title: Non-invasive modulation of brain activity and dream imagery during sleep
Full description of the call: Click here
Activity: The appointed candidate will participate in an ERC-funded research project aimed at exploring the effects of sensory stimulation protocols on brain activity and dream imagery during sleep.
Deadline: March 19th
PhD Position
A call will open in April-May 2021
What We Publish
Emotion suppression failures are associated with local increases in sleep-like activity
Giulia Avvenuti, Davide Bertelloni, Giada Lettieri, Emiliano Ricciardi, Luca Cecchetti, Pietro Pietrini, Giulio BernardibioRxiv, 2020. DOI: 10.1101/2020.08.04.235978Cortical and subcortical hemodynamic changes during human sleep slow waves
Betta, Handjaras, Leo, Federici, Farinelli, Ricciardi, Siclari, Meletti, Ballotta, Benuzzi, Giulio BernardibioRxiv, 2020. DOI: 10.1101/2020.04.29.067702Our 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.
Centre d’investigation et de recherche sur le sommeil - Francesca Siclari and Jacinthe Cataldi - Lausanne University Hospital. Lausanne, Switzerland.
Centre d’investigation et de recherche sur le sommeil - Raphael Heinzer and Camila Hirotsu - Lausanne University Hospital. Lausanne, Switzerland.
EOC Neurocentro - Mauro Manconi and Anna Castelnovo - Istituto di Neuroscienze cliniche della Svizzera Italiana. Lugano, Switzerland.
CNR-Pisa - Michele Emdin and Nicola Vanello - Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica CNR. Pisa, Italy.
What We Develop
Our Talks
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.
Imperatori - Cross-participant prediction of vigilance stages through the combined use of wpli and wsmi eeg functional connectivity metrics. Congress of the Word Sleep Society, Vancouver, Canada, 2019.
Avvenuti - Il ruolo del corpo calloso nella propagazione crossemisferica delle onde lente del sonno: uno studio in pazienti con callosotomia totale. Congress of the Italian Society of Sleep Medicine (AIMS), Genova, Italy, 2019.
Betta - Slow waves of sleep are associated with increased thalamic activity and with a delayed decreased activity in primary sensory cortices. Congress of the Italian Society of Sleep Medicine (AIMS), Genova, Italy, 2019.
Bernardi - Experience-dependent regulation of sleep-need: effects on brain functioning and behavioral performance. Congress of the International Organization of Psychophysiology, Lucca, Italy, 2018.
Bernardi - The effects of acute, short-term visual deprivation on low-frequency EEG activity during wakefulness and sleep. Congress of the Word Sleep Society, Prague, Czech Republic, 2017.