Found, the brain switch that sends us off to sleep

SCIENTISTS have found the brain’s ‘sleep switch’, paving the way for better drugs to help insomniacs get a good night’s rest.

Researchers in the US identified a circuit that determines the way in which we feel drowsy, nod off and stay asleep.

By controlling how much of the brain chemical dopamine enters our system, the switch either keeps us awake or sends us off to sleep. A drug that specifically flicks the switch could provide a better night’s sleep for the one in three Britons who regularly struggle with insomnia.

Pills do not work for everyone and the sleep they induce can be of poor quality, with many feeling groggy the next morning.

In a series of experiments on male mice, Californian researchers used genetic techniques to flick the sleep switch on or off.

When the key brain cells were suppressed at a time of day when the animals would normally be wide-awake, they ‘conked out’. Not even the arrival of a female mouse, the smell of food or the scent of a fox could rouse them.

Turning on the switch had the opposite effect, shaking the mice out of a sound sleep and keeping them awake long past their bedtime, the journal Nature Neuroscience reports.

Researcher Luis de Lecea said: ‘Now we see the possibility of developing therapies that, by targeting this... circuit, could induce much higher-quality sleep.’