Preprint: "A Drosophila Model for Behavioral Sleep Modification"

BioRxiv Preprint: "A Drosophila Model for Behavioral Sleep Modification"
Samuel J Belfer, Alexander G Bashaw, Michael L Perlis, Matthew S Kayser

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/391375

URL: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/08/13/391375

From the abstract: "Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder among adults, especially affecting individuals of advanced age or with neurodegenerative disease. ... Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is the first-line treatment for insomnia ... Despite the well-documented efficacy of CBT-I, little is known regarding how CBT-I works at a cellular and molecular level ... Here, guided by human behavioral sleep therapies, we developed a Drosophila model for behavioral modification of sleep. ... We apply this sleep opportunity restriction paradigm to aging and Alzheimer's disease fly models, and find that sleep impairments in these models are reversible with sleep restriction ... This work establishes a model to investigate the neurobiological basis of CBT-I, and provides a platform that can be exploited towards novel treatment targets for insomnia."