Sleep differentially affects early and late neuronal responses to sounds in auditory and perirhinal cortices

A fundamental feature of sleep is reduced behavioral responsiveness to external events, but the extent of processing along sensory pathways remains poorly understood. While responses are comparable across wakefulness and sleep in auditory cortex (AC), neuronal activity in downstream regions remains...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inbioRxiv
Main Authors Sela, Yaniv, Krom, Aaron J, Bergman, Lottem, Regev, Noa, Nir, Yuval
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 22.08.2019
Subjects
Cortex (auditory)
Cortex (perirhinal)
Cortex (somatosensory)
Firing pattern
Information processing
Latency
NREM sleep
REM sleep
Sensory integration
Sleep
Sleep and wakefulness
Vigilance
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Summary:A fundamental feature of sleep is reduced behavioral responsiveness to external events, but the extent of processing along sensory pathways remains poorly understood. While responses are comparable across wakefulness and sleep in auditory cortex (AC), neuronal activity in downstream regions remains unknown. Here we recorded spiking activity in 435 neuronal clusters evoked by acoustic stimuli in the perirhinal cortex (PRC) and in AC of freely behaving male rats across wakefulness and sleep. Neuronal responses in AC showed modest (around 10%) differences in response gain across vigilance states, replicating previous studies. By contrast, PRC neuronal responses were robustly attenuated by 47% and 36% during NREM sleep and REM sleep, respectively. Beyond the separation according to cortical region, response latency in each neuronal cluster was correlated with the degree of NREM sleep attenuation, such that late (>40ms) responses in all monitored regions diminished during NREM sleep. The robust attenuation of late responses prevalent in PRC represents a novel neural correlate of sensory disconnection during sleep, opening new avenues for investigating the mediating mechanisms.
DOI:10.1101/743666