[Mechanisms of dream-sleep-wakefulness cycle].

For the occurrence of each state of sleep (slow wave sleep, paradoxical sleep) there are two neuronal networks. The first one called executive is responsible for the sleep phenomenology; the second called permissive is for the triggering of sleep. Wakefulness depends on a very complex system (10 structures) including the permissive networks which inhibit sleep. Sleep onset is thought as a blockade of the waking state by an antiwake network synthesizing hypnogenic factors. Such a regulation allows to suggest that insomnia is a wake trouble depending on a revisited therapy.