, 2005). Y 27632 Given the absence of A2a mRNA in the VLPO, these findings suggest that adenosine may cause the meningeal cells to produce a second messenger that activates the VLPO. Whole-cell patch-clamp studies of the effects of adenosine on VLPO neurons in hypothalamic slices have produced conflicting results. Two studies using patch-clamp intracellular recordings reported that adenosine disinhibited VLPO neurons by reducing presynaptic inhibitory inputs (Chamberlin et al., 2003, Morairty et al., 2004 and Strecker et al., 2000), but another study using
extracellular recordings found that adenosine reduced firing of VLPO neurons via a direct A1 effect but increased it via an A2a effect (Gallopin et al., 2005). It is not known whether these hypothalamic slices may have retained the basal meninges, but future work should probably make note of this. These effects of adenosine on VLPO selleck kinase inhibitor neurons may bias the switch toward increased activity and thus increase the likelihood of it flipping into a sleep state. Models of the flip-flop switch under conditions of high sleep pressure on the VLPO indicate that it may become more unstable (Fulcher et al., 2010), perhaps accounting for microsleep episodes and lapses in attention seen in human subjects during sleep deprivation (Van Dongen et al., 2003). Still, it is unlikely that adenosine alone can explain the homeostatic drive for sleep and much ongoing work focuses on additional
sleep-promoting factors (Krueger, 2008). Regardless of what constitutes the homeostatic sleep factors, there is much evidence that prolonged wakefulness results in more intense slow waves in the EEG during NREM sleep and that these decrease over the nearly sleep period (Achermann and Borbély, 2003). This relationship suggests that the slow wave activity is homeostatically controlled and reflects sleep drive (Vyazovskiy et al., 2009). Slow waves during NREM sleep represent the summation of synaptic potentials onto cortical neurons, which are hyperpolarized and silent (in a down state) during the troughs of the waves and fire bursts of action potentials (in an up state) during the peaks. The duration and frequency of the down periods
correlates strongly with the intensity of slow wave activity during spontaneous sleep and recovery sleep. Prolonged wakefulness increases the firing rates of cortical neurons (Vyazovskiy et al., 2009), and cortical areas that recently have been especially active have local increases in slow waves during subsequent NREM sleep, suggesting that the slow wave activity may be homeostatically driven (Huber et al., 2004 and Vyazovskiy et al., 2000). It has been proposed that the slow wave activity may reflect synaptic reorganization during sleep in response to recent activity (Vyazovskiy et al., 2009), but it is also possible that the increased metabolic activity may elevate levels of adenosine and other sleep-promoting factors that drive slow wave activity (Bjorness et al., 2009 and Halassa et al., 2009).