Acute Sleep Deprivation Suppresses Sleep Spindles in Mice

Yan Xu,1 Miaoqin Tan,1 Dongcai Li,2 Chenxi Zhang2 1Department of Psychiatry, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Psychiatry, Longgang Otolaryngology Hospital and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Otolaryngology, Shenzhen Institute of Otolaryngology, Shenzhen, Guangdong, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Chenxi Zhang, Email [email protected]: Sleep spindles and cortical coherence are key electrophysiological signatures of thalamocortical communication and large-scale neural synchrony during non-REM sleep. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of acute 12-hour sleep deprivation on spindle dynamics and cortical coherence across frequency bands in mice.Methods: Sixteen adult male C57BL/6J (8 per group) mice were randomly assigned to either a natural sleep (NS) or sleep deprivation (SD) group. We recorded bilateral frontal EEGs continuously for 12 hours following intervention. Sleep spindles (8– 16 Hz) were automatically detected, and interhemispheric coherence from delta to gamma bands was computed using Welch’s method.Results: Compared to NS mice, SD mice showed a significant reduction in frontal spindle count (61 ± 14 vs 103 ± 12 spindles; mean ± SEM; p = 0.027) and amplitude (47 ± 6 μV vs 68 ± 5 μV; p = 0.002). Delta (0.5– 4 Hz) and theta (4– 8 Hz) interhemispheric coherence showed non-significant decreasing trends in SD mice (p > 0.05), whereas alpha (8– 13 Hz), beta (13– 30 Hz), and gamma (30– 40 Hz) coherence did not differ.Conclusion: Acute sleep deprivation significantly impairs spindle generation. It also resulted in a trend toward reduced low-frequency cortical coherence, though this change was not statistically significant.Keywords: sleep deprivation, sleep spindles, cortical coherence, acute sleep deprivation