Home > Program Faculty >Dr. Tononi Laboratory
Dr. Tononi’s group is studying consciousness and its disorders, as well as the mechanisms and functions of sleep. In his work on sleep, Dr. Tononi has pioneered the combined use of electrophysiological approaches and molecular biology. Current work using rat, mouse, and fly models is aimed at understanding the functions of sleep by focusing on the consequences of sleep and sleep deprivation at the cellular and molecular level. A new hypothesis suggests that a primary function of sleep is to enable synaptic homeostasis. This hypothesis has led to several experimental tests, including the recent demonstration that sleep can be induced on a local basis by learning and plasticity. The synaptic homeostasis hypothesis has implications with respect to the neurobiology of mood disorders and possibly the neural control of breathing where sleep disorders are prominent.
In his work on consciousness, Dr. Tononi has addressed the problem of how the activities of functionally specialized areas of the brain can be integrated to give rise to a unified conscious experience. To this end, he has: (1) constructed large-scale computer models based on the anatomy and physiology of the thalamocortical system to study the mechanisms of information integration; (2) developed theoretical approaches aimed at defining and measuring the integration of information within the nervous system; (3) pioneered experimental approaches aimed at characterizing the neural substrate of conscious experience by using neuro-imaging and, more recently, transcranial magnetic stimulation. This work has recently led to the formulation of the information integration theory of consciousness. He has been recognized by the NIH for his work by the funding of a Pioneer Award to support his research.