For most of us, falling asleep does not feel as simple as flipping a switch. The surprisingly complex process of drifting from wakefulness to sleep is governed by the brain’s cortex, and new research from UCSF imaging scientists advances our understanding of this important phenomenon. Joline Fan, MD, MS, Kiwamu Kudo, Parul Verma, PhD, Kamalini Ranasinghe, MBBS, PhD, Hiro Morise, Anne Findlay, Keith Vossel, Heidi Kirsch, MD, MS, Ashish Raj, PhD, Andrew Krystal, MD, and Srikantan Nagarajan, PhD, recently detailed their findings in “Cortical Synchrony and Information Flow during Transition from Wakefulness to Light Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep” published in The Journal Of Neuroscience. They discovered that during this period, information flow activity shifts from the back of the brain to the front, accompanied by an increase in cortical excitation relative to inhibition.
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