Biology Seminar Series: Chiara Cirelli,"The Burden of Wake and the Reasons for Sleep: how sleep promotes synaptic homeostasis

Chiara Cirelli received her medical degree and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Pisa, Italy, where she started investigating the molecular correlates of sleep and wake and the role of the noradrenergic system in sleep regulation. She continued this work as Fellow in experimental neuroscience at the Neuroscience Institute in San Diego, California, and since 2001 at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where she is currently Professor in the Department of Psychiatry.  Dr. Cirelli’s research is aimed at investigating the functions of sleep by using a combination of electrophysiological, molecular, genetic, and ultrastructural approaches. Together with her long-term collaborator, Dr. Giulio Tononi, she has developed the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis, according to which sleep is needed for synaptic renormalization, to counterbalance the net increase of synaptic strength caused by wake plasticity.