Shuntaro Uchida et al. of the University of Tsukuba in Japan have published a new study on the neurons in the medulla that keep our bodies motionless during REM sleep. As it turned out, when we are dreaming, neurons in the ventromedial layer send signals to the cells of the spinal cord to suppress movement.
During an experiment on mice, the researchers managed to turn off this chain of interactions. When this group of neurons was blocked from signaling, the scientists saw that the mice began to move during REM sleep like people with sleep disorders, for example – sleepwalkers.
This discovery could possibly lead to the emergence of new treatments for sleep paralysis, characterized by muscle atony (short-term loss of muscle tone), or even more severe sleep disorders, such as narcolepsy, which manifests as sudden attacks of sleep or loss of consciousness (cataplexy).
A person suffering a cataplexy attack is awake, but his muscles behave as if he were asleep, which leads to a sudden loss of consciousness. The scientists tested the hypothesis that a certain group of these neurons affects this condition in mice with signs of cataplexy. By silencing the neurons, they were able to shorten the seizure, which is a very encouraging sign.
The study was published in December 2020 in Journal of Neuroscience.
