Sleep maintains excitatory synapse diversity in the cortex and hippocampus

Abstract

How sleep deprivation affects cognition remains elusive. Synaptome mapping of excitatory synapses in 125 regions of the mouse brain revealed that sleep deprivation selectively reduces synapse diversity in the cortex and hippocampus. Sleep deprivation targeted specific types and subtypes of excitatory synapses while maintaining total synapse density. Altered synaptic responses to neural oscillations in a computational model suggest that sleep prevents cognitive impairments by maintaining normal brain synaptome architecture.