Cirelli, C.; Tononi, G. The Many Unknowns of Partial Sensory Disconnection during Sleep: A Review of the Literature. Clin. Transl. Neurosci.2024, 8, 9.
Cirelli, C.; Tononi, G. The Many Unknowns of Partial Sensory Disconnection during Sleep: A Review of the Literature. Clin. Transl. Neurosci. 2024, 8, 9.
Cirelli, C.; Tononi, G. The Many Unknowns of Partial Sensory Disconnection during Sleep: A Review of the Literature. Clin. Transl. Neurosci.2024, 8, 9.
Cirelli, C.; Tononi, G. The Many Unknowns of Partial Sensory Disconnection during Sleep: A Review of the Literature. Clin. Transl. Neurosci. 2024, 8, 9.
Abstract
When we are asleep we lose the ability to promptly respond to external stimuli and yet we spend many hours every day in this inherently risky behavioral state. This simple fact strongly suggests that sleep must serve essential functions that rely on the brain going offline, on a daily basis, and for long periods of time. If these functions did not require partial sensory disconnection, it would be difficult to explain why they are not performed during waking. Paradoxically, despite its central role in defining sleep and what sleep does, sensory disconnection during sleep remains a mystery. We have a limited understanding of how it is implemented along the sensory pathways, we do not know whether the same mechanisms apply to all sensory modalities, nor do we know to which extent these mechanisms are shared between non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and REM sleep. The main goal of this contribution is to review some knowns and unknowns about sensory disconnection during sleep as a first step to fill this gap.
Keywords
Arousal threshold; NREM sleep; REM sleep; auditory system; visual system; olfactory system; pain; OFF periods
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Neuroscience and Neurology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
