Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA.
Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Center for Neural Circuits and Sensory Processing Disorders, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA; Department of Physiology and Neuroscience, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA.
Curr Biol. 2024 Oct 21;34(20):4597-4611.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.08.020. Epub 2024 Sep 11.
Sleeping animals can be woken up rapidly by external threat signals, which is an essential defense mechanism for survival. However, neuronal circuits underlying the fast transmission of sensory signals for this process remain unclear. Here, we report in mice that alerting sound can induce rapid awakening within hundreds of milliseconds and that glutamatergic neurons in the pontine central gray (PCG) play an important role in this process. These neurons exhibit higher sensitivity to auditory stimuli in sleep than wakefulness. Suppressing these neurons results in reduced sound-induced awakening and increased sleep in intrinsic sleep/wake cycles, whereas their activation induces ultra-fast awakening from sleep and accelerates awakening from anesthesia. Additionally, the sound-induced awakening can be attributed to the propagation of auditory signals from the PCG to multiple arousal-related regions, including the mediodorsal thalamus, lateral hypothalamus, and ventral tegmental area. Thus, the PCG serves as an essential distribution center to orchestrate a global auditory network to promote rapid awakening.
睡眠中的动物可以被外部威胁信号迅速唤醒，这是生存的重要防御机制。然而，目前尚不清楚快速传递感觉信号的神经元回路。在这里，我们在小鼠中报告称，警报声可以在数百毫秒内诱导快速觉醒，而桥脑中央灰质 (PCG) 中的谷氨酸能神经元在这个过程中起着重要作用。这些神经元在睡眠中比在觉醒时对听觉刺激更敏感。抑制这些神经元会导致声音诱导的觉醒减少和内在睡眠/觉醒周期中睡眠增加，而它们的激活会导致从睡眠中超快觉醒并加速从麻醉中苏醒。此外，声音诱导的觉醒可以归因于听觉信号从 PCG 传播到多个觉醒相关区域，包括中脑背侧丘脑、外侧下丘脑和腹侧被盖区。因此，PCG 作为一个重要的分布中心，协调一个全局的听觉网络，促进快速觉醒。
