Prestigious award for scientist exploring consciousness and sleep

A psychiatrist at UW–Madison is one of 13 scientists nationwide to receive the prestigious Pioneer Award, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today.

Giulio Tononi, a consciousness expert who aims to understand the biological function of sleep, will receive up to $500,000 per year for five years in support of his research. The Pioneer Award grants prize recipients the intellectual freedom to pursue innovative – and potentially high-risk, high-reward – research directions in the field of biomedical science.

“This award means we can now pursue novel and risky research to investigate the function of sleep,” says Tononi, who plans to use the NIH prize to invite new students and collaborators to address what Tononi calls “one of world’s few remaining biological mysteries.”

Though humans spend at least a third of their lives sleeping, scientists are yet to understand why it is biologically necessary to “disconnect” from the environment for several hours a day. Tononi says the answer may lie in an idea he calls the ‘synaptic homeostasis hypothesis.’ Sleep, the researcher suggests, may be essential for recalibrating the brain’s synapses, or neural structures that are critical for the flow of information from one neuron to another.

“When we are awake, whether we are aware of it or not, we are constantly learning and our brain circuits are constantly changing,” says Tononi. “As a result, we are likely to have a lot of synapses that are stronger in the evening than they were in the morning.”

While stronger synapses underpin human memories, synaptic activity is very energy-intensive, says Tononi. Sleep may be necessary then, to fine-tune synaptic strength so that the brain retains information in the most efficient way possible.

Tononi joined UW–Madison’s psychiatry faculty in 2001. A native of Trento, in northern Italy, the researcher studied medicine, with a residency in psychiatry, at the University of Pisa. In the same year that he completed medical studies, in 1989, Tononi also earned a doctoral degree in neuroscience from the same institution. For more on Tononi’s work visit www.sleepconsciousness.org.