User:Nocturnalhomosapien/sandbox

This is the practice session I am using to practice making my own Wikipedia page.

Introduction
Wow this is honestly pretty cool!

Current Research
Elizabeth Maywood and her colleagues have also studied interactions between the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and local clocks in the brain, contributing to knowledge about the impact of the circadian component in the two-process model of sleep regulation on sleep quality.

To study the effects of interactions between the SCN and local clocks in the brain, Maywood’s group conducted a study comparing various sleep parameters in three different groups of mice: 1) wild type (WT) mice with 24 hour circadian periods, 2) mutant CK1ε Tau mice having 20 hour circadian periods, and 3) chimeric CK1ε mice, with dopamine 1a receptor (Drd1a) expressing cells in the SCN exhibiting 24h circadian periods and extra-SCN local clocks exhibiting 20 h periods; the chimeric mice were temporally misaligned.

When measuring the quality of sleep for the mice through several parameters, Maywood’s group found evidence that temporal misalignment between the SCN and local clocks compromised sleep architecture and the overall sleep quality for the chimeric mice. Chimeric mice saw less NREM sleep than their temporally aligned counterparts, decreased sleep recovery abilities, and increased amounts of sleep fragmentation, all found to be the result of internal desynchronization between the SCN and local clocks. Additionally, the effects of circadian misalignment on sleep architecture affected the mices’ cognitive abilities, where chimeric mice performed worse on sleep-dependent memory tasks than their counterparts. These results demonstrate how temporal coherence between all clocks in the brain is important for maintaining effective circadian regulation of sleep.

While the specific contributions of local clocks across the brain remain unknown, Maywood’s research has shed light on the importance of extra-SCN clocks; these tissues play important roles in circadian sleep regulation, and coordination between these clocks and the SCN influences overall sleep quality.