Sleep and the mouse brain atlas

Keywords: mouse brain atlas, activations, density, sleep deprivation, circadian cycle
Project partners: Dr. Clare Diester, Dr. William Jinsoo Joo, Prof. Dr. Alex Schier
CeDA collaborators: Konstantinos Ntemos, Rodrigo C. G. Pena
Repositories: sleep-brain-atlas , bav

One of the main focuses of Alex Schier's group is the study of mechanisms that control sleep and waking states. In this collaboration with CeDA, Schier's group gathered stained c-FOS imaging data as a proxy for neural activation in the brains of mice subject to different experimental conditions. This is a proxy that allows for greater scope in exchange for less specificity, meaning we can analyze the whole brain at once, but cannot pinpoint exactly which neurons were activated. The experimental conditions include three different sleep-deprivation strategies and a control following the circadian cycle.

Can we identify distinct patterns of brain cell activation in the atlas of mice brain under different conditions (circadian cycle, sleep deprivation, etc.)?

• Find a suitable representation for local densities of activation within each condition
• Define areas where the patterns of activation densities are most distinguishable across the different conditions
• Relate the defined areas to known anatomical structures

Figure 1. 3D rendering of local brain cell activation densities in the mouse brain atlas for a sample condition in the circadian slice of the dataset ¶