Map and manipulate sleep oscillations to reveal their role in healthy cognitive development

Introduction

Sleep is essential to all animal life. But why are sleep needs greater in young mammals? Evidence points to a key role in cognitive development. Sleep correlates with brain immaturity, and sleep dysfunctions are frequent comorbidities of neurodevelopmental disorders. As screens invade their bedrooms, children are sleeping less and less, and learning disorders are on the rise. This is a growing public health concern.

Sleep and Neural Disorders

There is increasing evidence that poor sleep at critical development stages may facilitate the emergence of neural disorders. Yet this is only correlative, but not causal evidence.

Key Questions

How does sleep architecture differ in immature brains?

• Are specific sleep oscillations needed for neural maturation?
• What type of neural computations do they support?
• Can sleep dysfunctions directly contribute to social, cognitive, or learning impairments?

These crucial questions are still largely unanswered due to technical limitations.

Proposed Research Program

I propose to harness new concepts and tools from diverse fields of research to launch an ambitious program bridging neurodevelopment biology, systems neuroscience, and sleep research.

Interdisciplinary Approach

Because of our interdisciplinary approach, my team is in the unique position to pioneer breakthrough in vivo recordings and optogenetics in rat pups. I plan to record and decode neural activity from multiple brain areas while automatically scoring sleep in freely behaving pups, in order to elucidate the computational mechanisms at play during developmental sleep.

Methodology

I will combine high-density recordings with recent advances in viral, molecular, and CRISPR tools to:

1. Map sleep – or associated oscillatory mechanisms
2. Impair sleep mechanisms
3. Reveal their impact on healthy development

Ambition

My ambition is to set the stage for a new line of research in developmental systems neuroscience. I propose to study the emergence of neural computations, infer their roles across the lifespan, and reveal sleep as a prime target for therapeutics in developmental disorders.