Boosting sleep to promote myelination (360G-Wellcome-215267_Z_19_Z)

Myelin, the fatty substance surrounding nerve fibers, is essential for proper brain functioning. Loss of myelin integrity characterizes several debilitating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. Thus, understanding the factors that can modulate myelin formation and maintenance is crucial for these diseases. My recent work has shown that: Sleep favors the expression of genes implicated in myelin formation and myelin lipid turnover. Oligodendrocyte precursors that form the major source of newly formed myelinating-oligodendrocytes in the brain proliferate preferentially during sleep. By contrast, sleep restriction leads to myelin thinning, suggesting sleep is an essential requirement for maintaining myelin integrity. These results raise the intriguing question: can we promote myelination by enhancing sleep? Here, I will use closed-loop acoustic stimulation in sleeping mice to enhance NREM and REM sleep. Increasing evidence has shown that this method can reliably boost cardinal neurophysiological features of NREM and REM sleep in both rodents and humans. This approach will allow me to verify whether sleep enhancement promotes myelination in the mouse forebrain. This research will advance our knowledge about the factors that regulate myelination. Furthermore, it will provide insight into new possible ways of intervention in Multiple Sclerosis and related disorders based on sleep enhancement.