Multi-omics as a Strategy for Understanding Sleep’s Role in Memory

For at least a century (Jenkins and Dallenbach, Am J Psychol 35:605–12, 1924), behavioral data from both human subjects and animal models have supported the idea that sleep in the hours immediately following learning is essential for storing new information in the brain (Aton et al., Encyclopedia of life science. John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, Chichester, 2009b; Rasch and Born, Physiol Rev 93:681–766, 2013; Walker and Stickgold, Neuron 44:121–33, 2004). However, our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying sleep’s effect on memory consolidation has been slowed by the sheer number of neurophysiological variables that are capable of affecting this process and the fact that these variables all change simultaneously when the brain transitions from wake to NREM sleep and from NREM to REM (Puentes-Mestril and Aton, Front Neural Circuits 11, 2017; Puentes-Mestril et al., Sleep 42. pii: zsz095, 2019). In response to this complexity, a discovery-based experimental strategy has been adopted, in which a range of omics technologies have been used to quantify neurobiological responses to sleep deprivation (SD). This chapter provides an overview of advances to our understanding of an important biological issue—the effect sleep has on brain function—driven by omics-based approaches to this question.