Vladyslav Vyazovskiy
PhD
Associate Professor of Neuroscience
In the last decades a vast empirical and theoretical knowledge about sleep mechanisms has been accumulated. Surprisingly, the function of sleep still remains elusive. Moreover, in place of the long-standing question “why do we sleep?” now comes a more fundamental one: “what is sleep?”
Among the key features of sleep are: a) the occurrence of slow waves in NREM sleep and theta waves in REM sleep on the EEG, b) the regular alternation between NREM and REM sleep episodes; and c) the slow homeostatic process that tracks sleep-wake history. The neurophysiologic substrates underlying these phenomena differ considerably and have been investigated in great detail. For example, much is known about cellular and network mechanisms underlying the slow oscillation (Crunelli and Hughes, 2009; Harris and Thiele, 2011) and about the neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of subcortical circuits regulating NREM and REM sleep (Brown et al., 2012; Jones, 2005; Saper et al., 2010). Furthermore, mathematical modelling has been essential for providing formal framework to investigate the global sleep-wake dynamics (Borbély and Achermann, 2005). While much has been learned about each of these phenomena in isolation, little has been done to reconcile the processes occurring at these “micro” and “macro” scales in a unified coherent framework.
Our aim is to understand the mechanisms governing the spatio-temporal dynamics of brain activity during sleep. This will help us to understand not only what sleep is, but also why it is necessary.
Recent publications
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Diazepam effects on local cortical neural activity during sleep in mice.
Journal article
McKillop LE. et al, (2021), Biochem Pharmacol
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Waking experience modulates sleep need in mice
Journal article
BANNERMAN D. et al, (2021), BMC Biology
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Psilocin acutely disrupts sleep and affects local but not global sleep homeostasis in laboratory mice
Journal article
Thomas CW. et al, (2021)
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Modulation of recognition memory performance by light and its relationship with cortical EEG theta and gamma activities.
Journal article
Hasan S. et al, (2021), Biochem Pharmacol
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Unresponsive or just asleep? Do local slow waves in the perilesional cortex have a function?
Journal article
Krone LB. and Vyazovskiy VV., (2020), Brain, 143, 3513 - 3515