Sleep and signals

Abstract: I will present a simple, physiologically-based model of the key sleep-wake neuronal circuitry.  The model, first proposed by Phillips and Robinson in 2008, has been constrained from both behaviour and physiology, and is able to predict many diverse phenomena: from sleep deprivation recovery, arousal thresholds, and fatigue variation during sleep deprivation. I will explain the model and my contributions to it, including a mathematical characterization of its main dynamical features, and extensions of it to include the impact of external stimuli, including pharmaceutical perturbations, and fatigue variation during sleep deprivation. My aim will be to show how behavioural predictions follow from the mathematical properties of the underlying model, which itself has a direct physiological interpretation; this style of model is able to explain behaviour in terms of underlying physiological processes.