FRIPRO-Fri prosjektstøtte

Sleep is like food and water, if we go too long without it, we may die. Yet, as a society, we sleep less and less. Our children are among the most vulnerable victims of this public health epidemic. Indeed, doctors are reporting a dramatic increase in children with poor sleep or sleep disorders. And chronic sleep deprivation is a potential time bomb for a child's health, as it may lead to learning disorders and mental illnesses. Though health professionals are ringing the alarm bells, we do not really know what is happening in the brain during sleep that is so essential for healthy development. I am proposing to find this out by using new miniaturized devices to record brain activity in young animals while they are sleeping. I will also use the latest advances in genetics to manipulate these animals' sleep and test how this affect their development. To finally understand the role of sleep in brain development will be highly relevant for health and education professionals, policy makers and caregivers. Specifically, it will provide the necessary scientific background to refine recommendations for appropriate sleep habits and open new avenues of research for preventing developmental and learning disorders.

Sleep is essential for healthy cognitive development. Recent studies report widespread chronic sleep deprivation among children. Despite this increasing public health epidemic, the role of sleep in cognitive development has mostly been studied in children by measuring the effects of sleep deprivation. Yet, such methods fail to address the underlying neural mechanisms that can only be manipulated in animals. To tackle this crucial gap in our knowledge, I have designed a bold and innovative project at the junction of neurodevelopmental biology, system neuroscience, and sleep research. The NRC-YRT scheme will grant me independent funding to establish this new research in Norway, at the transdisciplinary Institute for Basic Medical science. I propose to be hosted by Johan Storm, who successfully guided many young scientists in their transition towards independence and who owns the main equipment needed for my research. Supported by a (inter)national collaborative network, I will combine my multidisciplinary cutting-edge expertise in in vivo electrophysiology, viral tools, and mouse genetics, to detect and manipulate sleep state, as well as the emergence of state-specific network mechanisms. Specifically, I plan to test two independent hypotheses: (1)Replay during deep sleep of sequence of activity originally evoked during waking, emerges early to orchestrate developmental network reorganisation and promote cognitive development. (2)REM sleep facilitates off-line activation of neural circuits that shape synapse maintenance, and targeted early neural death. This would explain the high proportion of REMS observed in immature brains. My research has the potential for wide societal impact and excellent publications. Given this, my track record and its transdisciplinary and collaborative aspect, I will be well positioned, in the next 2 years, to secure international ERC, EMBO or HFSP starting grants and mentor a new generation of system developmental neuroscience in Norway.