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The hypocretin/orexin antagonist almorexant promotes sleep without impairment of performance in rats

Overview of attention for article published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, January 2014
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Title
The hypocretin/orexin antagonist almorexant promotes sleep without impairment of performance in rats
Published in
Frontiers in Neuroscience, January 2014
DOI 10.3389/fnins.2014.00003
Pubmed ID
Authors

Stephen R. Morairty, Alan J. Wilk, Webster U. Lincoln, Thomas C. Neylan, Thomas S. Kilduff

Abstract

The hypocretin receptor (HcrtR) antagonist almorexant (ALM) has potent hypnotic actions but little is known about neurocognitive performance in the presence of ALM. HcrtR antagonists are hypothesized to induce sleep by disfacilitation of wake-promoting systems whereas GABAA receptor modulators such as zolpidem (ZOL) induce sleep through general inhibition of neural activity. To test the hypothesis that less functional impairment results from HcrtR antagonist-induced sleep, we evaluated the performance of rats in the Morris Water Maze in the presence of ALM vs. ZOL. Performance in spatial reference memory (SRM) and spatial working memory (SWM) tasks were assessed during the dark period after equipotent sleep-promoting doses (100 mg/kg, po) following undisturbed and sleep deprivation (SD) conditions. ALM-treated rats were indistinguishable from vehicle (VEH)-treated rats for all SRM performance measures (distance traveled, latency to enter, time within, and number of entries into, the target quadrant) after both the undisturbed and 6 h SD conditions. In contrast, rats administered ZOL showed impairments in all parameters measured compared to VEH or ALM in the undisturbed conditions. Following SD, ZOL-treated rats also showed impairments in all measures. ALM-treated rats were similar to VEH-treated rats for all SWM measures (velocity, time to locate the platform and success rate at finding the platform within 60 s) after both the undisturbed and SD conditions. In contrast, ZOL-treated rats showed impairments in velocity and in the time to locate the platform. Importantly, ZOL rats only completed the task 23-50% of the time while ALM and VEH rats completed the task 79-100% of the time. Thus, following equipotent sleep-promoting doses, ZOL impaired rats in both memory tasks while ALM rats performed at levels comparable to VEH rats. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that less impairment results from HcrtR antagonism than from GABAA-induced inhibition.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 36 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 2 6%
France 1 3%
Unknown 33 92%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 9 25%
Student > Ph. D. Student 7 19%
Student > Bachelor 5 14%
Student > Doctoral Student 3 8%
Student > Master 3 8%
Other 4 11%
Unknown 5 14%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 10 28%
Neuroscience 7 19%
Medicine and Dentistry 4 11%
Psychology 3 8%
Social Sciences 1 3%
Other 3 8%
Unknown 8 22%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 25 March 2014.
All research outputs
#14,915,133
of 25,374,917 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Neuroscience
#6,085
of 11,541 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#174,030
of 319,281 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Neuroscience
#30
of 51 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,374,917 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,541 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.9. This one is in the 45th percentile – i.e., 45% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 319,281 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 45th percentile – i.e., 45% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 51 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 41st percentile – i.e., 41% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.