Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Elevated body temperature during sleep in orexin knockout mice.

Takatoshi Mochizuki1, Elizabeth B Klerman, Takeshi Sakurai

  • 1Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.

American Journal of Physiology. Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology
|March 25, 2006
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Translational applications of circadian research: connecting chronobiology to medicine.

Npj biological timing and sleep·2026
Same author

Bright Light Shapes Diurnal Sleep-Wake Rhythms with Associated c-Fos Activity in the Anterior Paraventricular Thalamus in the Nile Grass Rat.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience·2026
Same author

Occult obstructive sleep apnea in survivors of Hodgkin lymphoma following radiation therapy: an atypical and under-recognized phenotype.

Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine·2026
Same author

Adrenaline restores Bmal1 transcriptional rhythms dampened by SARS-CoV-2 infection in Cthrc1-positive pulmonary fibroblasts derived from the Nile grass rat.

Scientific reports·2026
Same author

SleepNet: Attention-Enhanced Robust Sleep Prediction using Dynamic Social Networks.

Proceedings of the ACM on interactive, mobile, wearable and ubiquitous technologies·2026
Same author

Drug Development.

Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association·2025

Orexin knockout mice exhibit fragmented sleep and impaired thermoregulation. These mice show a blunted decrease in core body temperature during sleep, suggesting a novel role for orexin in heat loss regulation.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Physiology
  • Sleep Research

Background:

  • Core body temperature (Tb) regulation is influenced by behavioral state, activity, and biological rhythms.
  • Orexin, a neuropeptide, is released during wakefulness and implicated in heat production.
  • Orexin knockout (KO) mice display a narcolepsy-like phenotype with fragmented sleep-wake cycles.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of orexin in thermoregulation by examining core body temperature in orexin KO mice.
  • To determine if orexin influences Tb during wakefulness and sleep.
  • To explore the relationship between orexin, sleep fragmentation, and thermoregulatory deficits.

Main Methods:

  • Measurement of core body temperature (Tb) in orexin KO and wild-type (WT) littermate mice.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Monitoring of sleep-wake states and locomotor activity.
  • Analysis of Tb fluctuations during wakefulness, spontaneous sleep, and recovery sleep after deprivation.

    • Main Results:

    • Orexin KO mice exhibited normal diurnal Tb variations but reduced ultradian rhythms of Tb, activity, and wakefulness.
    • Tb decrease during the onset of sleep was significantly blunted in orexin KO mice compared to WT mice (0.4°C vs 1.0°C).
    • Even during recovery sleep, orexin KO mice maintained a higher Tb (0.7°C) than WT mice.

    Conclusions:

    • Orexin plays an unexpected role in thermoregulation, specifically in facilitating heat loss during sleep.
    • The blunted fall in Tb during sleep in orexin KO mice may result from impaired heat loss mechanisms or persistent heat production.
    • These findings suggest that impaired orexin-mediated thermoregulation could contribute to the fragmented sleep observed in narcolepsy.