Functions of Sleep in Body and Brain

Sleep regulation and function is arguably one of the biggest unanswered questions in biology. It is common to begin didactic lectures on sleep with the statement "we spend one third of our lives sleeping and we don’t know why or how". Enormous progress has been made in recent years on the "how" problem. Beginning with the identification of different brain regions involved in controlling wake, sleep, and sleep states, there has been rapid progress is studying their neurochemistry, patterns of gene expression, electrophysiological signatures, and interactions. Much of this progress constituted themes of the first GRC on "Sleep Regulation and Function: Emerging Themes and Paradigm Shifts" held in 2014. We will continue to be concerned with recent advances on the "how" questions with sessions on epigenetics of sleep and new circuits involved in sleep regulation, but will delve deeper into the "why" questions – the function(s) of sleep. Whereas the prevailing view had been, as expressed by Dr. Alan Hobson, "Sleep is of the brain, by the brain, and for the brain". We are increasingly discovering links between sleep and non-brain functions that have huge impacts on health. In this GRC we will explore the role of sleep in the immune system and also the role of sleep in pain and fatigue mechanisms. We’ll also focus on an entirely new consideration, sleep and the microbiome. Brain functions of sleep are still leading hypotheses and areas of exciting investigation that will be covered, and the most exciting at present is the involvement of sleep in the neurophysiology of memory consolidation which will be the subject of our keynote and also one of our sessions. The field of sleep is advancing and broadening rapidly, and the significance of this meeting is that we will bring together leaders in these various areas with the intent of developing a more integrative view of sleep that will help guide future work. A main goal of this meeting will be to discover and discuss where opportunities exist for significant advances in basic sleep research.