Sleep Homeostat Research (VIDEO)

University of Oxford

Caption

Lead authors Drs. Diogo Pimental and Jeff Donlea describe their research into what causes the sleep homeostat -- a 'switch' in the brain -- to flip and wake us up, and the discovery of the 'Sandman' ion channel.

It includes a clip of a fly being woken up by optogenetically stimulated dopamine release (starts 1'10"), and an animation explaining how Sandman works (starts 2'09").

Credit

Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour/ University of Oxford

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