Meeting Abstract
Sleep is a natural physiological process that is essential for survival, and prevention of sleep leads to cognitive dysfunction as well as a marked inflammatory response in mammals. However, a number of vertebrate taxa, including birds, exhibit resilience to sleep loss over the annual cycle (e.g., breeding, migration). We have developed a non-invasive method of disrupting sleep in caged birds that involves an automated, sweeping horizontal bar that arouses sleeping birds. Adult zebra finches on a 12-h light:12-h dark rotation were exposed to fragmented sleep cycles (bar moves every 2 min) for a 12-h period (either dark or light cycle) or no disruption (control group), and then pro-inflammatory cytokine gene expression (IL-1, IL-6) was assessed in liver, spleen, fat, heart and brain using RTPCR. We predicted that sleep disruption would lead to a pro-inflammatory response. Results from this study will provide insight into how birds cope with sleep loss from an immunological perspective.
