Our laboratory investigates the effects of commonly used anesthetics on sleep-related neurons and their communication pathways. We aim to better understand how anesthetics impact endogenous sleep pathways and affect perioperative sleep and cognition. Recently we identified the anatomical substrates for some of the sleep changes caused by certain types of general anesthetics.
We did so by using genetically modified mice in which there is endogenous expression of c-Fos, a marker of neuronal activation. However, using this new technique, we will be able to directly measure cellular excitability in groups of neurons in the brainstem that are associated with sleep. This is a major advantage over simply quantifying c-Fos expression as a surrogate marker of neuronal activation.
Our next step will be to pursue the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the sleep changes induced by certain types of general anesthetics. This will entail measuring cellular excitability in brainstem neurons associated with sleep using neuropixel probes, as well as using spatial transcriptomic approaches to quantify and map the expression of genes related to sleep in these areas.
