BRAINWAVES: A serotonin-depleted mouse with an electroencephalography headmount implanted to record sleep activityNICK MURRAY
The paper N.M. Murray et al., “Insomnia caused by serotonin depletion is due to hypothermia,” Sleep, 38:1985-93, 2015. Sleepless nights Early research into serotonin’s functions suggested that the neurotransmitter promotes sleep: lab animals deprived of the chemical often developed insomnia. More recent evidence indicated that serotonin plays a part in wakefulness instead, a theory that has gained significant traction. But explanations of the initial experimental data were scarce—so Nick Murray, then a research fellow at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, started digging. Faulty furnace? “Over the past 5 or 10 years, we’ve found that serotonin is a key neurotransmitter for generating body heat,” says Murray. To investigate whether this role was related to serotonin’s impact on sleep, he and his colleagues injected ...
