A team of sleep researchers from Washington State University has received a $1.5 million grant award from the W.M. Keck Foundation-a philanthropic institution supporting innovative research in science, engineering and medicine-to test a new theory of the brain organization of sleep.

The award enables a team of sleep and neuroscience researchers from the Pullman and Spokane campuses, led by principal investigator Gregory Belenky, director of the WSU Sleep and Performance Research Center, to test the revolutionary new theory first proposed by WSU neuroscientist, James Krueger and his colleague the late Ferenc Obal. Challenging the prevailing view that sleep is imposed globally on the brain by central sleep-regulatory circuits, the team argues that sleep develops locally in the brain from use-dependent metabolic changes in cortical columns and other neuronal assemblies and that it is the coalescence of numerous areas of local sleep that leads to whole-brain sleep.

With the award from the W.M. Keck Foundation, this interdisciplinary team of researchers will develop and integrate novel electrophysiological, imaging, and behavioral measures and new instrumentation developed by David Rector, another WSU neuroscientist, and his collaborators, WSU electrical engineer George LaRue and WSU physicist Matt McCluskey. These advances will allow this team to evaluate the functional and metabolic state of individual cortical columns in the brain to test their theory. In parallel to basic research studies conducted in Pullman, the application of these novel methods by Belenky and Hans Van Dongen, WSU Spokane specialist in sleep deprivation and performance, to human subjects studied at the in-residence laboratory of the Sleep and Performance Research Center will provide critical tests of the theory.

"This research will be instrumental in understanding the regulation of sleep and its effect on performance in health and disease and will advance the development of new means to manage sleep to sustain effective performance," Belenky said. "This research will lead to a paradigm shift in the study of human sleep and performance and, more broadly, affect theory, modeling and experimentation in the fields of neuroscience, biology and psychology."

James Petersen, vice provost for research at WSU, applauded the efforts of the research team in securing the award to fund this novel research project. "This award is very significant," he said, "not only because of its magnitude, but also because it is from the Keck Medical Research line, which typically funds institutions with major medical schools. Receiving such an award is an indication of the strength of the collaboration between researchers in Pullman and Spokane, as well as the quality of the medical research led by this team."

Belenky and his colleagues said they are grateful to the W.M. Keck Foundation for the opportunity afforded by this award. They look forward to collaborating on research that will revolutionize the scientific study and conceptualization of sleep and lead to new ways to manage sleep and sustain performance, safety, and well-being in our increasingly complex, 24-7 world. -Source: http://researchnews.wsu.edu