Homeostatic control of deep sleep inDrosophila: Implications for Discovering Correlates of Sleep Pressure

Abstract

AbstractHomeostatic control of sleep is typically addressed through mechanical stimulation-induced forced wakefulness and the measurement of subsequent increases in sleep. A major confound attends this approach: biological responses to deprivation may reflect a direct response to the mechanical insult rather than to the loss of sleep. Similar confounds accompany all forms of sleep deprivation and represent a major challenge to the field. Here we describe a new paradigm for sleep deprivation inDrosophilathat fully accounts for sleep-independent effects. Our results reveal fundamentally new features of sleep regulation in the fly, including multi-cycle sleep rebounds following deprivation and the homeostatic control of deep sleep states. Our results illustrate the critical need to control for sleep-independent effects of deprivation when examining the molecular correlates of sleep pressure and call for a critical reassessment of work that has not accounted for such non-specific effects.