The Sleep research laboratory in the Department of Physiology is an internationally renowned sleep laboratory recognized for its outstanding basic and innovative sleep research. It isnot only the first in the country but also one of the rare laboratories where both animal and human sleep and chronobiology research are conducted.
Since inception of All India Institute of Medical Sciences in 1956, the Department was fortunate to have Professors BK Anand and AS Paintal, the twoundisputable leaders of neurophysiology in the country at that time. Dr Anand as the Head, research in the department mostly centred around on study of hypothalamic mechanism of feeding behaviour. In 1965 Dr Baldev Singh joined the department of Neurology as professor and started collaborative research in neurophysiology with Dr Anand. After completion of his assignment in Neurology Prof. Baldev Singh joined the department of Physiology as Emeritus Professor, to pursue his research interest. This marked the beginning of sleep research in the department as well as in the country.
At that time, two young researchers T Desiraju and GS Chhina were working with Dr Anand. Baldev Singh and Desiraju had a common interest, i.e. neurophysiology of sleep. They, along with Anand studied the electrical activity of cortical and sub-cortical regions in free-moving cats during sleep. They have also performed low voltage stimulations of sub-cortical regions to induce EEG synchronization. Lesions of the area lateral to the trigeminal nucleus abolished ipsilateral eye movements selectively during the paradoxical phase of sleep and not during the alert state (Desiraju et al, 1966; Desiraju et al, 1967; Singh et al, 1966).
They did split brain studies in cats and monkeys. Baldev Singh had an Indian Council of Medical Research project to study the electrophysiological signals during different stages of sleep in cats, monkeys and human subjects. SarojKesar was working with him for animal experimentation. Electro-sleep in human subjects was another area in which some work was done in the department by Prem Kumar from the army. Dr Anand and Dr Baldev Singh also investigated many renowned yogis during sleep-wake and meditation in the sixties.
In the late 1960s, Mauro Mancia from Milan, joined the department to study sleep physiology in monkeys. Mancia was a disciple of Giuseppe Moruzzi, the co-discoverer of Ascending Reticular Activating System. Their study of sleep-wakefulness cycle in conscious monkeys with split brain-stem showed that desynchronized sleep was almost abolished, and EEG synchronization was strongly reduced, in these monkeys. These studies gave further boost to the research on sleep at AIIMS (Mancia et al, 1967; 1968).
Dr V Mohan Kumar joined the department in December 1968. He was attracted by the scientific work of Desiraju, and personality and attitude of Prof Baldev Singh, which took him to sleep research.
After returning from USA,Desiraju started working independently on single cell activity in conscious monkeys during sleep and wakefulness,and published several single author papers (Desiraju, 1971; Desiraju, 1972a,b; Desiraju, 197a,b,c,d,e).As far as sleep research is concerned, that was a glorious period for the AIIMS, Delhi. Unfortunately Desiraju had to leave the Dept because of hostility as his rise was not digested by others.
Dr Mohan Kumar faced uphill roads in the prime of his career. When he came back from Milan after a post doc his job was given to somebody else. Inspite of departmental politics and deterrents he steered through all obstacles and pursued his research goals in sleep. Joining of Sikdar and Neelam as student during this critical period made all the difference. He had the first scientific publication from India in 1980 with Sikdar. In this paper they showed the changes in ventromedial hypothalamic neurons on stimulation of rostral and caudal brain stem reticular formation. While working in Milan, Dr Mohan Kumar had noticed that low frequency stimulation of caudal brainstem produced EEG synchronisation. It was his earnest desire to map out the areas in the brainstem that can produce EEG synchronisation. He was able to work on it and map out this reticular area in and around the nucleus gigantocellularis. This area can produce EEG synchronisation not only during low frequency stimulation, but also during high frequency stimulation from some of the points within this region (Mohan Kumar et al, 1985).
BN Mallick, Subimal Datta and Abdul Aleem joined the laboratory as PhD students. Mallick worked on preoptic neuronal activity during EEG alterations, and the changes produced in their activity by stimulation of rostral and caudal brain stem reticular formation (Mohan Kumar et al, 1984, Mallick et al, 1984; Mohan Kumar et al, 1985, Mallick et al, 1985; Mohan Kumar et al, 1986, Kumar et al, 1988). Datta worked on changes in sleep-wakefulness on application of adrenergic agonists and antagonists in the preoptic area (Mohan Kumar et al, 1984; Mohan Kumar et al, 1985, Datta et al, 1985; Mohan Kumar et al, 1988, Datta et al, 1988). Aleem was working on midline thalamic neurons, and their responsiveness to brainstem and hypothalamic inputs (Aleem et al, 1986; Mohan Kumar et al, 1987).
The laboratory shifted focus to the role of preoptic area on sleep. Subimal, Ratna, and Ramesh studied the preoptic area noradrenergic mechanism in sleep. Besides sleep the laboratory was also studying the role of the preoptic area in thermoregulation and sexual behaviour. The first neural transplantation study in the country was done in the laboratory in 1996. Sunita and Joshi John carried out studies to recover sleep after transplantation of fetal tissue in the preoptic area lesioned rat. We carried out for the first time simultaneous electrophysiological recording of sleep and functional magnetic resonance imaging in rats and showed activation of medial preoptic area during sleep (Khubchandani et al 2006. Baishali studied interrelationship between sleep and thermoregulation using telemetric recording of sleep, body temperature and locomotor activity in a specially designed environmental chamber (Ray et al). Dr Mohan Kumar superannuated in 2006. The illustrious students of Dr Mohan Kumar are now world renowned sleep scientists and neuroscientists. To name few are Sujit Sikdar, Subimal Datta, Birendra Nath Mallick, H N Mallick, Joshi John and Thomas Thannikkal.
H N Mallickwas working on the role preoptic area and medial septum integratingsleep-wakefulnesss with male sexual behaviour and thermoregulation.Vetrivelan, Srividyaand Kamalesh joined the Dept. Srividya and Kamalesh worked on the role of septum on sleep and neural mechanism of penile erection during REM sleep.
Mahesh and Deependra worked on role of lateral preoptic area on sleep thermal preference whereas Deependra was working on the role of thermoreceptors linking sleep and temperature. Karuna was instrumental in seating of the human sleep laboratory in 2014 which was the long cherished desire of Dr Mohan Kumar. Presently the laboratory is involved in study of sleep and its functions. The laboratoryis equippedwith fourdigital polysomnography, telemetric recording of sleep and body temperature, conventional electrophysiology for single unit recording, microinjection techniques, molecular imaging, institute neuroimaging set up and human sleep laboratory. Human sleep laboratory will beutilised as training centres for physicians and technicians in polysomnography which is a growing need for the country.
The laboratory had the honour of Dr Mohan Kumar as vice president of World Sleep Federation and President of Asian Sleep Research Society (ASRS) in the past and HN Mallick as present President of ASRS. The laboratory had the honour of organizing theFirst ever InternationalConference on sleep and sleep medicine in the country in 1992 which marked the beginning of modern sleep medicine in India.. It also conducted the Interim Congress of World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies in 2005. The laboratory is actively involved in organising sleep medicine courses forphysicians’ and technicians for last 10 years with Dr Deepak Shrivastava from UCDavis, USA. The laboratory is also promoting sleep healthamongst school children and general publicthrough lectures and exhibition. It has also participated in National TV Programme to attract young researchers to pursue a career in sleep.
Sleep medicine is a rapidly growing multidiscipline in the country. We dream to raise this small laboratory to a Integrative Sleep Medicine Centre to cater trained technicians and physicians to the country.
For more details please send an email at -drhmallick@yahoo.com
Training opportunities in Dr. Baldev Singh Sleep Lab AIIMS, Delhi
- Polysomnography in animals and human.
- Telemetric recording of sleep and body temperature
- Single neuronal recording in anesthetised and behaving animals
- Stereotaxic techniques, classical electrophysiology, intracerebral microinjection
- Cellular imaging
Team from Left to Right- Sriji, Trina, Karuna, Chaitanya, Binney, Lal Chandra, Rajeev, Rajesh and Hrudananda Mallick