Staying awake for dinner: hypothalamic integration of sleep, feeding, and circadian rhythms

doi:10.1016/S0079-6123(06)53014-6

Progress in Brain Research

Volume 153, 2006, Pages 243-252

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6123(06)53014-6 Get rights and content

Abstract

Daily patterns of sleep and wakefulness are inextricably linked to the regulation of feeding and energy metabolism. Both are affected by homeostatic as well as circadian drives, and both are tightly linked to thermoregulation. In this chapter, we review the basic drain circuitry that regulates sleep and wakefulness, including the flip-flop switch relationship of the arousal system and the ventrolateral preoptic sleep-promoting neurons. We then examine the role of the orexin/hypocretin neurons, which stabilize the switch while driving both wakefulness and foraging for food. We also review the role of the subparaventricular nucleus and the dorsomedial nucleus of the hypothalamus in circadian integration and modulation of both feeding and wake-sleep patterns.

Section snippets

Regulation of sleep and wakefulness: the flip–flop switch model

The waking state of the brain is maintained by a series of pathways that begin in the upper brainstem, and which ultimately result in thalamo-cortical activation (Fig. 1; see Saper et al., 2001, Saper et al., 2005c) for review). Although classically these pathways were attributed to a “reticular activating system” in fact, most of the ascending pathways to key targets originate in highly restricted populations of neurons with known neurotransmitters and connections, not in the more diffuse

Role of the orexin neurons in behavioral state regulation

In 1998, two groups of investigators simultaneously discovered a population of neurons in the lateral hypothalamus that produces a pair of closely related peptide neurotransmitters which one group called orexins and the other hypocretins (Sakurai et al., 1998; Sutcliffe, 1998). A year later, Yanagisawa and colleagues reported that mice in which the orexin gene had been deleted had a phenotype of narcolepsy (Chemelli et al., 1999), and Mignot and coworkers at the same time identified the gene

The hypothalamic integrator for circadian rhythms

Just as staying awake is an intrinsic component of regulation of feeding, the availability of food is a critical variable for shaping wake–sleep cycles. For example, in the 1950s Nyholm examined the behavior of Finnish bats over a summer (Nyholm, 1955; Saper et al., 2005b). He found that these quintessentially nocturnal animals were active exclusively during the dark cycle in the months from June to September, when the predator bird species were active by day and the weather in the evenings was

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Staying awake for dinner: hypothalamic integration of sleep, feeding, and circadian rhythms

Abstract

Section snippets

Regulation of sleep and wakefulness: the flip–flop switch model

Role of the orexin neurons in behavioral state regulation

The hypothalamic integrator for circadian rhythms

Cell

Physiol. Behav.

Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Cell

Neuron

Physiol. Behav.

Physiol. Behav.

Neuroscience

Cell

Trends Neurosci.

Trends Neurosci.

Brain Res.

Brain Res.

Neurosci. Lett.

Neuron

Reduced food anticipatory activity in genetically orexin (hypocretin) neuron-ablated mice

Eur. J. Neurosci.

c-Fos expression in hypothalamic nuclei of food-entrained rats

Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol.

Activity of norepinephrine-containing locus coeruleus neurons in behaving rats anticipates fluctuations in the sleep–waking cycle

J. Neurosci.

The melanin-concentrating hormone system of the rat brain: an immuno- and hybridization histochemical characterization

J. Comp. Neurol.

Hypoglycemia activates orexin neurons and selectively increases hypothalamic orexin-B levels: responses inhibited by feeding and possibly mediated by the nucleus of the solitary tract

Diabetes

Hypothalamic ventromedial nuclei amplify circadian rhythms: do they contain a food-entrained endogenous oscillator?

J. Neurosci.

Afferents to the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus

J. Neurosci.

Critical role of dorsomedial hypothalamic nucleus in a wide range of behavioral circadian rhythms

J. Neurosci.

Feeding-entrained circadian rhythms are attenuated by lesions of the parabrachial region in rats

Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol.

Chemically defined projections linking the mediobasal hypothalamus and the lateral hypothalamic area

J. Comp. Neurol.

Fos expression in orexin neurons varies with behavioral state

J. Neurosci.

Identification of sleep-promoting neurons in vitro

Nature