A neural circuit that can selectively induce sleep-like patterns in small regions of the brain demonstrates how sleep and arousal states may be controlled in local brain regions.
Sleep-related hemodynamic signals are much larger than those in the awake brain, so it is crucial to monitor the arousal state during studies of spontaneous activity.
The momentary levels of local cortical desynchronization and pupil-linked arousal pose dissociable influences not only on the processing of sensory information but also on human perceptual performance.
Pupil-linked arousal dynamics are influenced more strongly by high-level internal belief states than by low-level sensory events during decision-making.
Research into light-gated ion channels called channelrhodospins laid the foundations for the development of optogenetics, a technique that has gone on to revolutionize neuroscience.