https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-023-01059-1
Regular Article
A relay model of human sleep stages
1
Laboratory of Sleep/Wake Neurobiology, Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 5A Butlerova Street, 117485, Moscow, Russia
2
A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, 33 Leninskij Prospect, 119071, Moscow, Russia
Received:
27
August
2023
Accepted:
24
November
2023
Published online:
20
December
2023
Sleep is quantitatively described by subdividing polysomnographic records into intervals each of which is allocated to one of the just 5 all-or-nothing variables called “sleep–wake stages”. What are the mechanisms governing the establishment of such 5 relatively stable stages and rapid transitions between them? We modeled these stages as resulting from the competing interactions between the mutually inhibiting drives for wake, NREM sleep, and REM sleep that are proposed to work in a similar way as two-, two-, and one-way switch, respectively. The electromechanical counterparts of the stages were visualized as 5 variants of an electrical circuit connecting these switches with three lamps. During W and transient state N1, two sleep switches are switched off, and three lamps are turned off. During other transitions, one of these lamps is turning on after changing in on–off state of one or two of three switches. During transitions to N2, one (N2) lamp is turning on. During the following transitions to N3, one more (N3) lamp is turning on. During transitions from N2 to R, the N2 lamp is turning off, while the R lamp is turning on. Estimates of stage-specific scores on the 1st and 2nd principal components of the electroencephalographic spectra provided empirical evidence for such on–off states of these switches.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-023-01059-1.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
