AUTHOR=Adamantidis Antoine , Carter Matt C., De Lecea Luis TITLE=Optogenetic deconstruction of sleep-wake circuitry in the brain JOURNAL=Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience VOLUME=2 YEAR=2010 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/neuro.02.031.2009 DOI=10.3389/neuro.02.031.2009 ISSN=1662-5099 ABSTRACT=

How does the brain regulate the sleep–wake cycle? What are the temporal codes of sleep and wake-promoting neural circuits? How do these circuits interact with each other across the light/dark cycle? Over the past few decades, many studies from a variety of disciplines have made substantial progress in answering these fundamental questions. For example, neurobiologists have identified multiple, redundant wake-promoting circuits in the brainstem, hypothalamus, and basal forebrain. Sleep-promoting circuits have been found in the preoptic area and hypothalamus. One of the greatest challenges in recent years has been to selectively record and manipulate these sleep–wake centers in vivo with high spatial and temporal resolution. Recent developments in microbial opsin-based neuromodulation tools, collectively referred to as “optogenetics,” have provided a novel method to demonstrate causal links between neural activity and specific behaviors. Here, we propose to use optogenetics as a fundamental tool to probe the necessity, sufficiency, and connectivity of defined neural circuits in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness.