MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Brandon Hauer, Neuroscience PhD Student
Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute
Clayton Dickson, Professor
Departments of Psychology, Physiology, and the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute,
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Our lab is interested in the dynamics of sleep and sleep-like rhythms in the forebrain. One particular interest relates to how the brain can spontaneously switch between very different states like rapid eye movement sleep (REM, or dreaming sleep) and slow-wave sleep (deep, restorative stage of sleep).
We noticed that administering 100% oxygen to rats in an anesthetized preparation that closely models natural sleep produced an immediate and lasting switch into a slow-wave brain state. This happened as well in naturally sleeping rats. Interestingly, increasing carbon dioxide concentrations or decreasing oxygen in inspired air produced the opposite effect, namely a switch into activated or REM-like states. (more…)