Sleep and Brain Activity

In the last few decades, scientists have discovered that far from being a time of neural silence, sleep is characterized by complex patterns of electrical, neurochemical, and metabolic activity in the brain. Sleep and Brain Activity presents some of the more dramatic developments in our understanding of brain activity in sleep. The book discusses what parts of the brain are active in sleep and how, and presents research on the function of sleep in memory, learning, and further brain development. Coverage encompasses the network and membrane mechanisms responsible for waking and sleeping brain activity, the roles of glial cells in the sleeping brain, the molecular basis of sleep EEG rhythms, and research on songbirds, rodents, and humans indicating the function of sleep.

Special Features:

• Discusses brain physiology in sleep at the molecular and cellular level

• Presents research on the function of brain activity in sleep

• Encompasses both animal and human research findings

Dr. Frank has been working in the field of sleep biology for over 25 years He received his PhD in neuroscience at Stanford and managed his own sleep laboratories at UPENN and WSU. During this time, his lab made seminal discoveries about the role of glia in sleep. In 2009, they provided the first evidence that glia influence sleep regulation in vivo. That study was published in the prestigious journal Neuron and to date has been cited 852 times. Since then, his lab has published several other important papers on this topic (e.g. Current Biology 2020, Journal of Neuroscience, 2023), and he has presented this work at several conferences and invited talks. He has also published several reviews on this topic and has experience editing scientific books on the topic of sleep.