University of Zürich - Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology Section of Psychopharmacology and Sleep Research

Prof. Dr. med. Alexander Borbély
Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology University of Zurich Winterthurerstr. 190 8057 Zurich Tel. (0041) 44 635 5960 Fax (0041) 44 635 5707 borbelypharma.uzh.ch)

Main Goals, Keywords

Sleep regulation, circadian rhythm, EEG analysis, brain mapping, molecular genetic analysis of sleep, modeling of sleep and circadian rhythmicity. Sleep and regional cerebral blood flow assessed by PET (collaborative project with Clinic of Nuclear Medicine); sleep and EEG analysis in parkinsonian and pain patients before and after thalamotomy (collabora tive project with the Clinic of Neurosurgery), and in stroke patients (coll. with Clinic of Neurology, Univ. Bern).

Vice-president ("Prorektor für Forschung") of the University of Zurich since 2000.

Previous and Current Research

• Investigation of the physiological and neurochemical processes underlying the regulation of sleep in humans and animals
• Effect of CNS-active substances on sleep, daytime vigilance and body or brain temperature (e.g. benzodiazepine hypnotics and analogs; alcohol, caffeine, melatonin and synthetic congeners; adenosine receptor agonists and antagonists; serotonin-2 antagonists)
• Comparative sleep physiology
• Natural hypometabolic states (daily torpor) and sleep
• Sleep and circadian rhythms in normal and genetically manipulated mice (collaborative project)
• Signal analysis of the sleep EEG and mathematical modeling of sleep processes
• Sleep and sleep EEG in neurological and neurosurgical patients (collaborative projects)
• Changes of regional cerebral blood flow as assessed by PET after sleep deprivation and hypnotics (collaborative project)
• Sleep and immunology (collaborative projects)

Figure: Screen-shot of human sleep recording The "History view" on the left is a summary of the entire time since the recording was started. In the example shown, the recording had been going on for roughly 1.5 hours. A first slow-wave sleep episode has already occurred (white peaks). The larger "signal view" to the right of the screen shows the last 20 seconds of the signals plus some additional values at the bottom.

Future Projects

Topographic analysis of the sleep EEG; search for use-dependent local features of sleep; sleep in mice devoid of prion protein; clinical sleep studies

Selected Publications

1. Aeschbach D, Cajochen C, Landolt H, Borbély A A: (1996) Homeostatic sleep regulation in habitual short sleepers and long sleepers. Am. J. Physiol., 270:R41-R53.
2. Tobler I, Gaus S E, Deboer T, Achermann P, Fischer M, Rülicke T, Moser M, Oesch B, McBride P A, Manson J C: (1996) Altered circadian activity rhythms and sleep in mice devoid of prion protein. Nature, 380: 639-642.
3. Achermann P, Borbély A A: (1998) Coherence analysis of the human sleep electroencephalogram. Neuroscience, 85: 1195-1208.