Carter Matthew E, de Lecea Luis, Adamantidis Antoine
Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2013 May 20;7:43. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00043. eCollection 2013.
To survive in a rapidly changing environment, animals must sense their external world and internal physiological state and properly regulate levels of arousal. Levels of arousal that are abnormally high may result in inefficient use of internal energy stores and unfocused attention to salient environmental stimuli. Alternatively, levels of arousal that are abnormally low may result in the inability to properly seek food, water, sexual partners, and other factors necessary for life. In the brain, neurons that express hypocretin neuropeptides may be uniquely posed to sense the external and internal state of the animal and tune arousal state according to behavioral needs. In recent years, we have applied temporally precise optogenetic techniques to study the role of these neurons and their downstream connections in regulating arousal. In particular, we have found that noradrenergic neurons in the brainstem locus coeruleus (LC) are particularly important for mediating the effects of hypocretin neurons on arousal. Here, we discuss our recent results and consider the implications of the anatomical connectivity of these neurons in regulating the arousal state of an organism across various states of sleep and wakefulness.
为了在快速变化的环境中生存，动物必须感知其外部世界和内部生理状态，并适当地调节觉醒水平。异常高的觉醒水平可能导致内部能量储备的低效利用以及对显著环境刺激的注意力不集中。相反，异常低的觉醒水平可能导致无法适当地寻找食物、水、性伴侣以及其他生命所需的因素。在大脑中，表达下丘脑分泌素神经肽的神经元可能具有独特的能力来感知动物的外部和内部状态，并根据行为需求调节觉醒状态。近年来，我们应用了时间精确的光遗传学技术来研究这些神经元及其下游连接在调节觉醒中的作用。特别是，我们发现脑干蓝斑（LC）中的去甲肾上腺素能神经元对于介导下丘脑分泌素神经元对觉醒的影响尤为重要。在这里，我们讨论我们最近的研究结果，并考虑这些神经元的解剖连接在调节生物体在各种睡眠和觉醒状态下的觉醒状态中的意义。
