Conference of Thomas Andrillon - “Being awake while sleeping, being asleep while awake: consequences on cognition and consciousness"

“Being awake while sleeping, being asleep while awake: consequences on cognition and consciousness"

Sleep is classically presented as an all-or-nothing phenomenon. Yet, there is increasing evidence showing that sleep and wakefulness can actually intermingle and that wake-like and sleep-like activity can be observed concomitantly in different brain regions. I will here explore the implications of this conception of sleep as a local phenomenon for cognition and consciousness. In the first part of my presentation, I will show how local modulations of sleep depth during sleep could support the processing of sensory information by sleepers. I will also how, under certain circumstances, sleepers can learn while sleeping but also how they can forget. In the second part, I will show how the reverse phenomenon, sleep intrusions during waking, can explain modulations of attention. I will focus in particular on modulations of subjective experience and how the local sleep framework can inform our understanding of everyday phenomena such as mind wandering and mind blanking. I will also present the clinical implications of this framework for the diagnosis and treatment of attention deficits. Through this presentation and the exploration of both sleep and wakefulness, I will seek to connect changes in neurophysiology with changes in behaviour and subjective experiences.