Ding Jingwei, Shibata Shigenobu, Kubo Tatsuhiko, Tahara Yu
Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan.
Laboratory of Physiology and Pharmacology, School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Neurosci. 2025 Aug 22;19:1613747. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1613747. eCollection 2025.
Siestas, or daytime naps, play a critical role in relieving sleep pressure and maintaining physiological balance. However, the effects of siesta disruption remain largely unexplored.
In this study, we disrupted the natural siesta period (ZT20-23) through daily bedding changes for 2 weeks and examined its effects on overall stress levels, sleep architecture, behavior, and transcriptional responses in the frontal cortex.
Siesta disruption during the late dark phase led to increased core body temperature, locomotor activity, and wakefulness, while having minimal effects on subsequent light phase sleep patterns, behavioral performance, or serum stress markers. Transcriptomic analysis at ZT0 and ZT12 revealed distinct time dependent responses: ZT0 was associated with the activation of stress-related and homeostatic pathways, whereas ZT12 showed enrichment of genes related to neuronal structure and intracellular transport.
These findings suggest that even short-term siesta disruption induces mild but phase-specific cortical adaptations, involving early stress mitigation at ZT0 followed by synaptic remodeling at ZT12.
午睡，即白天小睡，在缓解睡眠压力和维持生理平衡方面起着关键作用。然而，午睡中断的影响在很大程度上仍未得到探索。
在本研究中，我们通过每天更换 bedding 持续2周来打乱自然午睡期（ZT20 - 23），并研究其对整体应激水平、睡眠结构、行为以及额叶皮质转录反应的影响。
黑暗后期的午睡中断导致核心体温升高、运动活动增加和清醒时间延长，而对随后的光照期睡眠模式、行为表现或血清应激标志物影响最小。在ZT0和ZT12进行的转录组分析揭示了不同的时间依赖性反应：ZT0与应激相关和稳态途径的激活有关，而ZT12显示与神经元结构和细胞内运输相关的基因富集。
这些发现表明，即使是短期的午睡中断也会诱导轻微但具有阶段特异性的皮质适应性变化，包括ZT0时早期应激缓解，随后在ZT12时进行突触重塑。
