title: Spontaneous neural activity during human non-rapid eye movement sleep.
abstract: Recent neuroimaging studies characterized the neural correlates of slow waves and spindles during human non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. They showed that significant activity was consistently associated with slow (> 140 μV) and delta waves (75-140 μV) during NREM sleep in several cortical areas including inferior frontal, medial prefrontal, precuneus, and posterior cingulate cortices. Unexpectedly, slow waves were also associated with transient responses in the pontine tegmentum and in the cerebellum. On the other hand, spindles were associated with a transient activity in the thalami, paralimbic areas (anterior cingulate and insular cortices), and superior temporal gyri. Moreover, slow spindles (11-13 Hz) were associated with increased activity in the superior frontal gyrus. In contrast, fast spindles (13-15 Hz) recruited a set of cortical regions involved in sensorimotor processing, as well as the mesial frontal cortex and hippocampus. These findings indicate that human NREM sleep is an active state during which brain activity is temporally organized by spontaneous oscillations (spindles and slow oscillation) in a regionally specific manner. The functional significance of these NREM sleep oscillations is currently interpreted in terms of synaptic homeostasis and memory consolidation.
authors.affiliation: Cyclotron Research Centre, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mascetti
authors.forename: Ariane
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Foret
authors.forename: Anahita Shaffii-Le
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Bourdiec
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Muto
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kussé
authors.forename: Mathieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jaspar
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Matarazzo
authors.forename: Thanh
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dang-Vu
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schabus
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Maquet
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D006706:Homeostasis / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D012894:Sleep Stages / Q000502:physiology*; D014851:Wakefulness / Q000502:physiology