About 70 million Americans suffer from a sleep problem; among them, nearly 60 percent have a chronic sleep disorder. Sleep disorders account for approximately $16 Billion of the annual US health care bill, yet basic questions about the functions and evolution of sleep remain unanswered and understudied. The purpose of this proposal is to investigate the distinct evolutionary histories and physiological functions of the two major mammalian sleep states REM (rapid eye movement or active sleep) and NREM (non-REM or quiet sleep) using state of the art analytic procedures for assessment of phylogenetic change. Such an investigation would clarify the role of each of the sleep states in the restorative capacities of sleep and would illuminate the ways in which breakdowns in the separate functions of each sleep state could lead to clinical disorders of sleep. Our approach is to use phylogeny-based comparative analysis to examine how, and in association with which other traits, REM and NREM evolved. Research during the past two decades has produced major advances in understanding sleep within particular species. Simultaneously, molecular advances have made it possible to generate phylogenetic trees, while new analytical methods provide the tools to examine macroevolutionary change on these trees. Thus, comparative methodology has entered a new """"""""Golden Age"""""""" - but these methods have yet to be applied to questions concerning the evolution of distinctive sleep state functions.
Our specific aims are to 1) Develop a Web-accessible comparative database on mammalian sleep patterns. Exhaustive literature searches have shown that quality data on sleep quotas is now available for approximately 150 species. We present analyses in this re-submittal that show that data on sleep quotas that were obtained over the past few decades in the laboratory are generally reliable and valid indices of sleep processes as they occur in the wild. Investigators who collected these data made strenuous efforts when recording sleep values to approximate natural conditions for the animals under study. Our other aims involve analyses of the data set constructed under Aim 1.
These aims i nclude 2) Investigate allometric trends, quantify phylogenetic signal and identify confounding variables. 3) Test a priori hypotheses for the evolution of and functions of active/REM versus quiet non-REM Sleep: 4) Develop a cost-benefit model of sleep states: Development of a cost-benefit model of sleep will allow us to further explore independent functions of REM/NREM and to derive clinical implications of perturbations in sleep durations of the two sleep states that typically occur in major human sleep disorders.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
1R01MH070415-01A1
Application #
6875314
Study Section
Biobehavioral Regulation, Learning and Ethology Study Section (BRLE)
Program Officer
Vicentic, Aleksandra
Project Start
2005-01-20
Project End
2007-12-31
Budget Start
2005-01-20
Budget End
2005-12-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2005
Total Cost
$296,919
Indirect Cost
Name
Boston University
Department
Neurology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
604483045
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02118
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Capellini, Isabella; McNamara, Patrick; Preston, Brian T et al. (2009) Does sleep play a role in memory consolidation? A comparative test. PLoS One 4:e4609
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Stavitsky, Karina; McNamara, Patrick; Durso, Raymon et al. (2008) Hallucinations, dreaming, and frequent dozing in Parkinson disease: impact of right-hemisphere neural networks. Cogn Behav Neurol 21:143-9
McNamara, Patrick; Capellini, Isabella; Harris, Erica et al. (2008) The Phylogeny of Sleep Database: A New Resource for Sleep Scientists. Open Sleep J 1:11-14
Acerbi, Alberto; McNamara, Patrick; Nunn, Charles L (2008) To sleep or not to sleep: the ecology of sleep in artificial organisms. BMC Ecol 8:10
Capellini, Isabella; Barton, Robert A; McNamara, Patrick et al. (2008) Phylogenetic analysis of the ecology and evolution of mammalian sleep. Evolution 62:1764-76
Lindenfors, Patrik; Nunn, Charles L; Barton, Robert A (2007) Primate brain architecture and selection in relation to sex. BMC Biol 5:20