REM sleep selectively prunes and maintains new synapses in development and learning

By Wei Li, Lei Ma, Guang Yang, Wen-Biao Gan. 2017

480 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The functions and underlying mechanisms of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep remain unclear. Here we show that REM sleep prunes newly formed postsynaptic dendritic spines of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in the mouse motor cortex during development and motor learning. This REM sleep-dependent elimination of new spines facilitates subsequent spine formation during development and when a new motor task is learned, indicating a role for REM sleep in pruning to balance the number of new spines formed over time. Moreover, REM sleep also strengthens and maintains newly formed spines, which are critical for neuronal circuit development and behavioral improvement after learning. We further show that dendritic calcium spikes arising during REM sleep are important for pruning and strengthening new spines. Together, these findings indicate that REM sleep has multifaceted functions in brain development, learning and memory consolidation by selectively eliminating and maintaining newly formed synapses via dendritic calcium spike-dependent mechanisms.

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Citations in the corpus

Replay in Deep Learning: Current Approaches and Missing Biological Elements (2021, neutral): “…sleep was implicated in pruning newly formed postsynaptic dendritic spines in the mouse motor cortex during development and motor learning and was also shown to promote the survival of new, learning-induced spines that are important for the improvement of motor skills (Li, Ma, Yang, & Gan, 2017).”
Plasticity during Sleep Is Linked to Specific Regulation of Cortical Circuit Activity (2017, background): “…help balance the cell’s excitability along its somatodendritic axis (Pfeffer et al., 2013; Wolff et al., 2014), and at the network level global downscaling during REM sleep following SWS might be considered to also counter local synaptic upregulation induced during SWS spindles (Li et al., 2017).”
Neural ensemble reactivation in rapid eye movement and slow-wave sleep coordinate with muscle activity to promote rapid motor skill learning (2020, background): “Furthermore, REM sleep ultimately refines these newly formed spines, pruning some and stabilizing others [32].”