2025 Seed Grant
Iris Titos Vivancos, Ph.D.
Northwestern University
Women’s Council Seed Grant
After exercising, sleep quality improves. We have all experienced a good night’s sleep after physical activity. This influence of exercise on behavior suggests that muscle signals can affect our brains. But how does the body tell the brain that it has been exercising so it can modify sleep accordingly? Despite the relevance of this relationship and potential to develop therapies to improve sleep, the mechanisms by which the muscle communicates with the brain remain poorly understood, and this is the focus of our proposal. We will combine our novel behavioral assays together with the vast genetic tools we have in fruit flies to gain insight into how muscle activity changes the brain and regulates sleep.
