Sleep slow wave activity (SWA) is thought to reflect sleep need, increasing after wakefulness and decreasing after sleep. We showed recently that a learning task involving a circumscribed brain region produces a local increase in sleep SWA. We hypothesized that increases in cortical SWA reflect synaptic potentiation triggered by learning. To further investigate the link between synaptic plasticity and sleep, we asked whether a procedure leading to synaptic depression would cause instead a decrease in sleep SWA. We show here that if a subject's arm is immobilized during the day, motor performance deteriorates and both somatosensory and motor evoked potentials decrease over contralateral sensorimotor cortex, indicative of local synaptic depression. Notably, during subsequent sleep, SWA over the same cortical area is markedly reduced. Thus, cortical plasticity is linked to local sleep regulation without learning in the classical sense. Moreover, when synaptic strength is reduced, local sleep need is also reduced.

Sleep spindles are generated by the thalamic reticular nucleus in conjunction with specific thalamic nuclei and are modulated by corticothalamic and thalamocortical connections. The deficit in sleep spindles in schizophrenia subjects may reflect dysfunction in thalamic-reticular and thalamocortical mechanisms and could represent a biological marker of illness.

Anhedonia, the loss of pleasure or interest in previously rewarding stimuli, is a core feature of major depression. While theorists have argued that anhedonia reflects a reduced capacity to experience pleasure, evidence is mixed as to whether anhedonia is caused by a reduction in hedonic capacity. An alternative explanation is that anhedonia is due to the inability to sustain positive affect across time. Using positive images, we used an emotion regulation task to test whether individuals with depression are unable to sustain activation in neural circuits underlying positive affect and reward. While upregulating positive affect, depressed individuals failed to sustain nucleus accumbens activity over time compared with controls. This decreased capacity was related to individual differences in selfreported positive affect. Connectivity analyses further implicated the fronto-striatal network in anhedonia. These findings support the hypothesis that anhedonia in depressed patients reflects the inability to sustain engagement of structures involved in positive affect and reward.anhedonia ͉ emotion regulation ͉ nucleus accumbens

Slow waves and sleep spindles are the two main oscillations occurring during NREM sleep. While slow oscillations are primarily generated and modulated by the cortex, sleep spindles are initiated by the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN), and regulated by thalamo-reticular and thalamo-cortical circuits. In a recent high-density electroencephalographic (hd-EEG) study we found that 18 medicated schizophrenics had reduced sleep spindles compared to healthy and depressed subjects during the first NREM episode. Here we investigated whether spindle deficits were: a) present in a larger sample of schizophrenic patients; b) consistent across the night; c) related to antipsychotic medications; d) suggestive of impairments in specific neuronal circuits. Whole night hd-EEG recordings were performed in 49 schizophrenics, 20 non-schizophrenic patients on antipsychotics and 44 healthy subjects. In addition to sleep spindles, several parameters of slow waves were assessed. Schizophrenics had whole-night deficits in spindle power (12–16 Hz) and in slow (12–14 Hz) and fast (14–16 Hz) spindle amplitude, duration, number and integrated spindle activity (ISA) in prefrontal, centroparietal and temporal regions. ISA and spindle number had the largest effect sizes (ES≥2.21). By contrast, no slow wave deficits were found in schizophrenics. These results indicate that spindle deficits i) can be reliably established in schizophrenics, ii) are stable across the night, iii) are unlikely to be due to antipsychotic medications, and iv) point to deficits in TRN and thalamo-reticular circuits.

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