Fish: Insomnia study specimen

A recent study has shown that zebrafish may suffer from insomnia, especially when scientists tamper with their genes. This will be a cheap, healthy model for studying sleep disorders.

Zebra fish (Photo: Pharyngula.org)

A recent study, detailed in Plos Biology, published on October 16, concluded that the fish actually slept and even lost sleep at night. This finding is enabling scientists to delve deeper into issues related to human sleep.

In the US, neurological disorder narcolepsy affects about 2,000 people. These people often feel sleepy during the day, but lose sleep at night. The muscle paralysis causes the narcolepsy to be lost but it causes hallucinations like a dream while sleeping.

In the previous study, Emmanuel Mignot, a professor of behavioral science and psychic sciences, at Stanford University, found that both the species of Dobermans and Labradors fell asleep with a receptor (receptor) Brain ' hypocretin ' performs wrong function. The two species have shown signs that they have narcolepsy similar to those in humans.

Zebra fish are sleeping
(Photo: Cas.vanderbilt.edu)

Mignot, Stanford author Tohei Yogawa and colleagues studied zebrafish in the tank and found that when these small swimming creatures are sleeping, they often tail their tail and often sink under the water surface all night. or dive deep into the bottom of the tank.

Next, scientists learned about the sleep of common zebrafish and genetically modified seahorses - lacking in hypocretin receptors.

In general, sleep time for genetically modified seahorses is usually reduced by 30% compared to normal zebrafish species. And when these mutated genes were removed, they still slept only half the time of normal ones.

Researchers say zebrafish will be a cheap, healthy specimen to study sleep disorders.

Bui Thanh