The Drosophila circuitry of sleep-wake regulation

Sleep is a deeply conserved, yet fundamentally mysterious behavioral state. Knowledge of the circuitry of sleep-wake regulation is an essential step in understanding the physiology of the sleeping brain. Recent efforts in Drosophila have revealed new populations which impact sleep, as well as provided unprecedented mechanistic and electrophysiological detail of established sleep-regulating neurons. Multiple, distributed centers of sleep-wake circuitry exist in the fly, including the mushroom bodies, central complex and the circadian clock cells. Intriguingly, certain populations have been implicated in specific roles in homeostatic rebound sleep, occurring after sleep loss. In short, our knowledge of fly sleep circuitry advances towards a greater view of brain-wide connectivity and integration of the signals and correlates of the state of sleep.