Shinjae Chung, Ashley Choi, Jennifer Smith, Yingqi Wang, Ray Shin, Bo Won Kim, Alyssa Wiest, Jin Xi, Isabella An, Jiso Hong, Hanna Antila, Steven Thomas, Janardhan Bhattarai, K Beier, Minghong Ma, Franz Weber
Sleep disturbances are prevalent in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and have a major impact on the quality of life. Strikingly, sleep problems are positively correlated with the severity of ASD symptoms, such as memory impairment. However, the neural mechanisms underlying sleep disturbances and cognitive deficits in ASD are largely unexplored. Here, we show that non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREMs) is highly fragmented in the 16p11.2 deletion mouse model of ASD. The degree of sleep fragmentation is reflected in an increased number of calcium transients in the activity of locus coeruleus noradrenergic (LC-NE) neurons during NREMs...
March 14, 2024: Research Square