Looking for the lunar input pathway into the timing of sleep episodes

LEANDRO CASIRAGHI; DIEGO GOLOMBEK; HORACIO DE LA IGLESIA; IGNACIO SPIOUSAS

Buenos Aires

Congreso; XXXVII Reunión Anual SAN 2022; 2022

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

Many different factors shape the timing of sleep in humans, the most important being the homeostatic drive for sleep (i.e. the more we stay awake, the more we feel we need to sleep; process S) and the circadian drive (the time our body clock says it’s best to sleep; process C). These are the elements of the so-called “two-process model of sleep regulation”, which has proven helpful for studying sleep dynamics. According to it, the combination of the S and C signals determines the times of the start and end of sleep periods, and one can manipulate each process’ features (e.g. relative weight, amplitude, kinetic variables) to predict sleep times under different physiological and environmental conditions. Recently, we reported the occurrence of modulation of sleep times in real-life settings that follow the lunar cycle. The mechanism(s) through which such changes in sleep are mediated are still unknown, and the prevalence of this effect in hyper-industrialized populations suggests that it may not be simply mediated by moonlight. Here we add input with a lunar period to features within the S and C processes in the model and use it to predict sleep times. We compare these results to field recorded data to test candidate pathways of how a lunar-like signal could be affecting sleep.