The effect of sleep upon the transmission of afferent activity in the somatic afferent system.

Macaque monkeys were trained to fall asleep while sitting in a primate chair with their heads restrained. A gentle vibratory stimulus was delivered to the glabrous skin of the hand; it did not provoke awakening or change the sleep cycle of the macaque. Postcentral neuronal response to the amplitude of a sine wave mechanical stimulus and neuronal spontaneous activity were observed repetitively during all the phases of normal night sleep cycles. One hundred six neurons which could be entrained by a cutaneous mechanical stimulus were studied during both waking and sleep. At threshold, cyclic entrainment of the discharges of postcentral neurons decreased to 81 +/- 0.25% during light sleep (S1 + S2), to 64 +/- 0.26% during deep sleep (S3 + S4), and to 9 +/- 0.98% during desynchronized sleep with rapid eye movements (REMs).