Sleep-related automobile accidents account for 1,500 deaths and 71,000 injuries annually, and sleep-related problems are known to affect both the productivity and safety of the American workplace. The National Sleep Foundation estimates the annual cost to be $100 billion. In Phase I, a low-cost, low-stress, tethered electroencephalographic (EEG) and electromyographic (EMG) recording system for mice was successfully developed and tested. The system will enable more researchers to study mouse sleep in order to uncover the physiological roles and genetic basis of sleep. This integrated, turnkey system has numerous advantages over existing systems: reduction of surgery time from 45 to 10 minutes; two EEG channels, allowing more detailed EEG analysis and enabling the development of automated scoring algorithms; improved swivel design to reduce stress; elimination of cable movement artifacts; all-in-one system is simple to set up and use, and the cost per animal is less than half that of current mouse sleep systems. Recordings from C57BI6/J mice proved that the system can be used to accurately record and analyze all stages of sleep. Phase II will focus on system refinement, validation, and automatic scoring development.
