Too hungry to sleep

Starvation suppresses sleep, but the mechanisms are not well understood. Here, mice that were food-deprived for 24 hours showed increased wakefulness at the expense of sleep, and increased firing and FOS expression in neurons of the paraventricular thalamus (PVT). Most of these neurons expressed calretinin (PVT^CR+) and projected to the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST). Optogenetic activation of PVT^CR+ terminals in the BNST promoted wakefulness, and chemogenetic inhibition of these neurons decreased wakefulness. Overall, these findings indicate that the PVT^CR+–BNST pathway is crucial for starvation-induced arousal.