A novel neural pathway linking visual input and sleep status

At least 30% of adults suffer sleep-related problems. Sleep disruption can contribute to a variety of medically-relevant problems, including cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric dysfunction. Environmental light and visual stimuli affect both sleep quantity and quality in various animals including insects, birds, mammals and humans. Although the biological basis of such a widely observed phenomenon remains unclear, the latest research and technical advances in the fruit fly, Drosophila, have made it feasible to identify the underlying neural mechanisms. Recently, we have demonstrated that a gene called Neurocalcin is required to modulate neuronal activities in the fly visual system for robust night-time sleep. We plan to use cutting-edge genetic, behavioural and imaging techniques to investigate how Neurocalcin interacts with other genes to control neuronal properties and discover the neural pathways that the visual system communicates with the central brain to regulate sleep. This project promises to address an important knowledge gap in sleep research. Moreover the human homologues of Neurocalcin are also expressed in the eyes and the brain. Therefore, the results from this project may provide insight into how natural and artificial light-related visual stimuli contribute to, and disturb, human sleep.