A top-down control of stress-induced REM sleep shortening.

The cerebral structures orchestrating the daily cycles of wake, rapid eye movement (REM), and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep have been identified in remarkable detail. However, the mechanisms by which they dynamically adapt to environmental challenges remain to be fully understood. Here, we show that the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a key hub in stress regulation, modulates sleep architecture through direct projections to the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus (VLPO), a major sleep center.

Breathing-driven prefrontal oscillations regulate maintenance of conditioned-fear evoked freezing independently of initiation.

Brain-body interactions are thought to be essential in emotions but their physiological basis remains poorly understood. In mice, regular 4 Hz breathing appears during freezing after cue-fear conditioning. Here we show that the olfactory bulb (OB) transmits this rhythm to the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) where it organizes neural activity.