In upper airway obstruction animals, enhanced orexin secretion, while crucially important for respiratory homeostasis maintenance, is also responsible for chronic partial sleep loss, as well as considerable impairment of energy metabolism and growth.

In AO animals, enhanced expression of orexin and OX1R plays a role in respiratory induced sleep and growth abnormalities.

The paper deals with data evidencing the existence of an evolutionary elaborated mechanism for "purifying" the molecular composition of the neuronal cytosol from abnormal conformers during physiological sleep. The theoretical basis of the process is the cooperative phase transitions of biomembranes, the leading moderators of which are the brain temperature, electrostatic potential, which contribute to the appearance of compensated and uncompensated transmembrane ruptures, breakdowns through which the process of elimination of abnormal proteins is carried out.