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Psychology Commons

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Life Sciences

Faculty Publications

2009

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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

Developmental Emergence Of Power-Law Wake Behavior Depends Upon The Functional Integrity Of The Locus Coeruleus, Andrew J. Gall, Badal Joshi, Janet Best, Virginia R. Florang, Jonathan A. Doorn, Mark S. Blumberg Jul 2009

Developmental Emergence Of Power-Law Wake Behavior Depends Upon The Functional Integrity Of The Locus Coeruleus, Andrew J. Gall, Badal Joshi, Janet Best, Virginia R. Florang, Jonathan A. Doorn, Mark S. Blumberg

Faculty Publications

STUDY OBJECTIVES:

Daily amounts of sleep and wakefulness are accumulated in discrete bouts that exhibit distinct statistical properties. In adult mammals, sleep bout durations follow an exponential distribution whereas wake bout durations follow a power-law distribution. In infant Norway rats, however, wake bouts initially follow an exponential distribution and only transition to a power-law distribution beginning around postnatal day 15 (P15). Here we test the hypothesis that the locus coeruleus (LC), one of several wake-active nuclei in the brainstem, contributes to this developmental transition.

DESIGN:

At P7, rats were injected subcutaneously with saline or DSP-4, a neurotoxin that targets noradrenergic …