[The regulation of the wakefulness-sleep cycle in normal rats and during sleep pathology]

Studies on the cycle wakefulness-sleep in rats with genetic predisposition to catalepsy revealed that this strain may be also used for investigation of sleep pathology. These animals exhibit abnormal regulation of the cycle which reveals itself in the onset of a "hypnotic" sleep phase. This phase is a result of a special form of sleep regulation and it cannot be classified as slow-wave or paradoxical sleep. In the hypnotic phase, no increase in spatial and temporal synchronization between structures was observed which is typical of the normal delta-sleep (0.704 +/- 0.053). Correlation connections between the visual cortex and subcortical structures remained weak (0.326 +/- 0.076) in spite of the increase in the level of EEG synchronization close to that during slow-wave sleep. It was shown that catalepsy may be due to lack of dopamine.