Astrocytic modulation of sleep homeostasis and cognitive consequences of sleep loss

By Michael M. Halassa, C. Florian, Tommaso Fellin, J. Munoz, So-Young Lee, Ted Abel, Philip Haydon, M. Frank. Neuron, 2009

870 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Astrocytes modulate neuronal activity by releasing chemical transmitters via a process termed gliotransmission. The role of this process in the control of behavior is unknown. Since one outcome of SNARE-dependent gliotransmission is the regulation of extracellular adenosine and because adenosine promotes sleep, we genetically inhibited the release of gliotransmitters and asked if astrocytes play an unsuspected role in sleep regulation. Inhibiting gliotransmission attenuated the accumulation of sleep pressure, assessed by measuring the slow wave activity of the EEG during NREM sleep and prevented cognitive deficits associated with sleep loss. Since the sleep-suppressing effects of the A1 receptor antagonist CPT were prevented following inhibition of gliotransmission and because intracerebroventricular delivery of CPT to wildtype mice mimicked the transgenic phenotype we conclude that astrocytes modulate the accumulation of sleep pressure and its cognitive consequences through a pathway involving A1 receptors.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c4dfb211863c52285d1912fa6ce14d86eaa10741

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

1. Pierre J. Magistretti
2. Akinobu Suzuki
3. Sarah A. Stern
4. G. W. Huntley
5. R. Walker
6. O. Bozdagi
7. N. Hamilton
8. David Attwell

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Pierre J. Magistretti
2. Akinobu Suzuki
3. Sarah A. Stern
4. David Attwell
5. G. W. Huntley
6. E. Arrigoni
7. J. Lipton
8. T. Scammell

In Neurology

1. N. Hamilton
2. David Attwell
3. J. Lipton
4. Pierre J. Magistretti

Citations in the corpus

• Neural Circuitry of Wakefulness and Sleep (2017, positive): “Interestingly, astrocytes are a major source of this extracellular AD (Halassa et al., 2009; Schmitt et al., 2012), and AD levels are regulated by AD kinase in astrocytes (Bjorness et al., 2016).”
• Astrocyte-neuron lactate transport is required for long-term memory formation (2011, positive): “Astrocytic adenosinemodulates sleep homeostasis and cognitive consequences of sleep loss (Halassa et al., 2009), and some studies have begun investigating the role of astrocytes in learning and memory.”
• Do astrocytes really exocytose neurotransmitters? (2010, background): “, pressure to sleep (assessed from slow-wave activity in the electroencephalogram) was reduced, as were cognitive deficits associated with sleep deprivatio”