Sleep spindles

Sleep spindles are NREM sleep EEG rhythms (7-14 Hz) that take place in the context of slow oscillations (0.6-0.8 Hz). They arise from the thalamus.

Function

 * Simulating sleep spindle-like activity post-synaptically and pre-synaptically in L5 of somatosensory cortex in rats but stimulating L2/3 produced a short term and/or LTP on average.
 * The potentiation starts to vanish with simulated spindles repeated more than 40 times.
 * STP seems to be NMDAR-dependent, whereas the LTP was L-type Ca2+ channel dependent.
 * potentiation favors a burst firing input, and may be pattern-specific.
 * Some have proposed that there is a coupling between spindles and sharp wave-ripples. They argue that deep pFC layers could be communicating back to the hippocampus with spindles.