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The role of sleep and wakefulness in myelin plasticity
Author(s) -
Vivo Luisa,
Bellesi Michele
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
glia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.954
H-Index - 164
eISSN - 1098-1136
pISSN - 0894-1491
DOI - 10.1002/glia.23667
Subject(s) - myelin , neuroscience , neuroplasticity , biology , wakefulness , sleep (system call) , white matter , sleep deprivation , mechanism (biology) , psychology , central nervous system , cognition , electroencephalography , medicine , philosophy , radiology , epistemology , computer science , magnetic resonance imaging , operating system
Abstract Myelin plasticity is gaining increasing recognition as an essential partner to synaptic plasticity, which mediates experience‐dependent brain structure and function. However, how neural activity induces adaptive myelination and which mechanisms are involved remain open questions. More than two decades of transcriptomic studies in rodents have revealed that hundreds of brain transcripts change their expression in relation to the sleep–wake cycle. These studies consistently report upregulation of myelin‐related genes during sleep, suggesting that sleep represents a window of opportunity during which myelination occurs. In this review, we summarize recent molecular and morphological studies detailing the dependence of myelin dynamics after sleep, wake, and chronic sleep loss, a condition that can affect myelin substantially. We present novel data about the effects of sleep loss on the node of Ranvier length and provide a hypothetical mechanism through which myelin changes in response to sleep loss. Finally, we discuss the current findings in humans, which appear to confirm the important role of sleep in promoting white matter integrity.