Defining slow wave sleep without slow waves

Abstract

Recent research by Parks, Schneider, and colleagues demonstrates that brain states during rodent sleep can be predicted from neural activity on millisecond and micrometer scales. These findings contradict the traditional view that defines sleep by brain-wide oscillations. Instead, this work posits that nonoscillatory activity governs different brain states.

Keywords: aperiodic scale-free activity; brain states; power scaling laws; sleep oscillations; vigilance states.