Joint heritability of sleep spindle activity and thalamic volume in early adolescence
Dr. Andjela Markovic
Received her BSc in Computer Science and her MSc in Biomedical Engineering from the ETH Zurich and her Piano Teaching Diploma from the Swiss Academy of Music and Music Pedagogy. During her PhD in Neurosciences at the University of Bern, she studied the association between sleep, development and mental health. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lucerne and at the Uni-versity of Bern, examining sleep neurophysiology from infancy to early adulthood
Joint heritability of sleep spindle activity and thalamic volume
Sleep spindles – brief bursts of oscillatory brain activity during non-REM sleep – are known to support memory consolidation, learning, and sleep stability. They are generated through interactions between the thalamus, a deep brain structure involved in processing sensory information and regulating sleep, and the cortex, the outer layer of the brain.
Andjela Markovic and colleagues explored the relationship between sleep spindles and the thalamus, focusing on the extent to which both spindle activity and thalamic size are influenced by the same genes. To investigate this, the team studied twins, which allowed them to separate genetic effects from environmental ones.
The study found that individuals with a larger thalamus tended to show stronger and more frequent sleep spindles, particularly over the back of the brain, with both spindle activity and thalamic size influenced by overlapping genetic factors.
The study highlights the value of sleep EEG recordings, which provide real-time information about how the brain functions during sleep. These recordings complement structural data by offering insight into brain activity beyond anatomy.
The findings may also have relevance for mental health research. Sleep spindle activity is often altered in psychiatric conditions such as depression and schizophrenia. By examining how brain structure and activity during sleep are connected, this study contributes to a better understanding of how certain brain features may be linked to psychiatric symptoms.
Overall, the research shows that both brain anatomy and function are shaped by shared genetic influences and that sleep spindles can serve as a useful marker for studying brain health.
Links to Paper:
Markovic A, Veen D, Hamann C, Adorjan K, Kaess M, Tuura O’Gorman R, Tarokh L. Joint Heritability of Sleep EEG Spindle Activity and Thalamic Volume in Early Adolescence. J Neurosci. 2025
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