894B Poster - 14. Neural circuits and behavior
Friday April 08, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Author:
Wanhe Li

Affiliation: Texas A&M University

Keywords:
h. circadian rhythms and sleep; a. stress responses

Social isolation and loneliness have potent effects on public health. Social psychologists have suggested that compromised sleep quality is a key factor that links persistent loneliness to adverse health conditions. We report that chronic, but not acute, social isolation reduces sleep in Drosophila. We use quantitative behavioral analysis and transcriptome profiling to differentiate brain states under acute vs. chronic social isolation. Despite animals' uninterrupted access to food, chronic social isolation altered the expression of metabolic genes and induced a brain state that signals starvation. Chronically isolated animals exhibit sleep loss accompanied by overconsumption of food, which resonates with anecdotal findings of loneliness-associated hyperphagia in humans. Chronic social isolation reduces sleep and promotes feeding through neural activities in the fan-shaped body columnar P2 neurons of the fly. Activation of these neurons causes misperception of acute social isolation as chronic social isolation and thus results in sleep loss. These and other new results reveal mechanistic links between chronic social isolation, metabolism, and sleep, presenting a new genetic model to understand the perception and central processing of chronic social isolation.