The article “Sensory processing reallocation from auditory to cardiac signals in REM sleep” has been published in the prestigious Current Biology Jounal showcasing the work led by Marzia De Lucia, Head of the CIBM EEG CHUV-UNIL Section, her team members Jacinthe Cataldi, Andria Pelentritou from CHUV and in collaboration with Sophie Schwartz from the University of Geneva.
Through EEG, the authors investigated how the human brain processes external sounds compared to cardiac signals both during wakefulness and Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. Results revealed that the brain’s responsiveness to external sounds decreases during sleep, whereas its response to internal cardiac signals increases. This suggests a shift in balance in the neural processing between the external environment and internal bodily signals depending on our state of vigilance: as responsiveness to the outside world goes down, neural processing to internal signals goes up.
The relative strength of the response to environmental versus bodily stimuli could provide a simple electrophysiological measure of the shift in responsiveness from external to internal sources, without requiring any behavioral output. This marker could be especially useful for stratifying responsiveness in patients with impaired overt behavior, such as disorders of consciousness patients.
