How (and why) the immune system makes us sleep

By L. Imeri, M. Opp. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2009

681 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Good sleep is necessary for physical and mental health. For example, sleep loss impairs immune function, and sleep is altered during infection. Immune signalling molecules are present in the healthy brain, where they interact with neurochemical systems to contribute to the regulation of normal sleep. Animal studies have shown that interactions between immune signalling molecules (such as the cytokine interleukin 1) and brain neurochemical systems (such as the serotonin system) are amplified during infection, indicating that these interactions might underlie the changes in sleep that occur during infection. Why should the immune system cause us to sleep differently when we are sick? We propose that the alterations in sleep architecture during infection are exquisitely tailored to support the generation of fever, which in turn imparts survival value.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Endocrine and Autonomic Systems, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f880a2c37323a957e11795f33f10b8de611fb894

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Citations in the corpus

Insufficient Sleep and the Socioeconomic Status Achievement Gap (2011, background): “Bidirectional effects between sleep and immune functioning are components of emerging theoretical models showing the central role of sleep in the connections between the immune system, cognition, and mental health (Bryant, Trinder, & Curtis, 2004; Foster & Wulf, 2005; Imeri & Opp, 2009).”
The Sleep-Immune Crosstalk in Health and Disease (2019, background): “Collectively, there is ample evidence that IL-1 and TNF, in particular, and PGD2, play a critical role in the regulation of physiological, spontaneous NREM sleep in animals, and potentially in humans, while they may not be involved in physiological REM sleep regulation (250, 551).”
Reciprocal regulation of the neural and innate immune systems (2011, background): “Pro-inflammatory cytokines and type I IFNs also have a role in the homeostatic regulation of slee”
The habenula: from stress evasion to value-based decision-making (2010, background): “Normal sleep and sleep-like states are considered to be beneficial for survival under stress because they minimize energy expenditur”