Rotem Falach
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falach.bsky.social
Rotem Falach
@falach.bsky.social
Neuroscientist at Tel Aviv University @labnir.bsky.social || Interested in sleep 😴 computational neuroscience 👩‍💻 system neuroscience 🧠 || Former full-stack engineer & team leader
Happening tomorrow- join us to hear about open science in sleep research and how it can advance the study of sleep and neurology 🧠💤
9 am PT/ 12 pm ET, Wednesday, November 12: lnkd.in/ggDgvNRN
November 11, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
The brain’s wake-to-sleep transition follows bifurcation dynamics with a distinct tipping point preceded by a critical slowing down

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Falling asleep follows a predictable bifurcation dynamic - Nature Neuroscience
Li et al. propose a conceptual framework to study the phenomenon of falling asleep based on electroencephalogram data. They show that a tipping point marks the brain’s nonlinear wake-to-sleep transiti...
www.nature.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Our paper on CSF, BOLD, pupil, and physiological measures in sleep deprivation and recovery sleep is finally out! 🎉 Congrats Zinong! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Attentional failures after sleep deprivation are locked to joint neurovascular, pupil and cerebrospinal fluid flow dynamics - Nature Neuroscience
Yang et al. show that moments of failed attention we experience after sleep deprivation reflect brief ‘sleep-like’ episodes in the brain, corresponding to a brain- and body-wide event with altered bra...
www.nature.com
October 29, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Simultaneous EEG-PET-MRI identifies temporally coupled and spatially structured brain dynamics across wakefulness and NREM sleep
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Simultaneous EEG-PET-MRI identifies temporally coupled and spatially structured brain dynamics across wakefulness and NREM sleep - Nature Communications
Using simultaneous EEG-PET-MRI, this study reveals tightly coupled physiological dynamics during the descent from wakefulness into NREM sleep and identifies network-specific activity underlying sensor...
www.nature.com
October 25, 2025 at 7:47 AM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
1/ "Hemispherotomy leads to persistent sleep-like slow waves in the isolated cortex of awake humans" - out now in @plosbiology.org, led by Michele Colombo, Jacopo Favaro, & Marcello Massimini. 🧠
October 17, 2025 at 7:57 AM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
There is a link between dreaming and memory consolidation. In this experiment, researchers put this theory to the test by recording dreams after #REM and #NREM sleep. academic.oup.com/sleep/articl...
Incorporation of complex narratives into dreaming
Statement of Significance This study introduces a systematic approach to assessing dream incorporation by linking presleep experiences to dream content usi
academic.oup.com
October 21, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Kort Driessen, Fabio Squarcio, Giulio Tononi, Chiara Cirelli

"Induction of cortical ON/OFF periods in awake mice fulfills sleep functions"

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Induction of cortical ON/OFF periods in awake mice fulfills sleep functions
Can animals obtain core benefits of sleep while remaining awake? In mammals, slow-wave sleep is characterized by synchronized neuronal activity alternating between ON and OFF periods. Slow-wave activi...
doi.org
October 9, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Cannabis and sleep architecture: A systematic review and meta-analysis

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A follow-up to this SRS podcast:

sleepresearchsocietypodcast.podbean.com/e/srs-podcas...
Cannabis and sleep architecture: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Cannabis use for sleep is increasingly prevalent, yet its effects on sleep architecture remain unclear. This systematic review and meta-analysis exami…
www.sciencedirect.com
September 19, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Sleep deprivation exhibits age-dependent effect on infra-slow global brain activity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.12.675828v1
September 17, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Just published in World Psychiatry our study "Trauma under psychedelics: how psychoactive substances impact trauma processing" . Amazing work led by @ophirnetzer.bsky.social with the brave survivors of the Nova festival attack. Huge team effort, thx to all!
👉 doi.org/10.1002/wps....
Trauma under psychedelics: how psychoactive substances impact trauma processing
Click on the article title to read more.
doi.org
September 16, 2025 at 9:13 AM
My super talented labmates are doing it again 🎉💪
🚨 New paper alert! 🚨(1/6)

Excited to share our work, out now in Science Advances

We show that a rapid norepinephrine surge along a brainstem pathway (LC→PRN) is a key driver of sound-evoked awakenings
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
An early surge of norepinephrine along brainstem pathways drives sensory-evoked awakening
The locus coeruleus has a specialized pathway to the brainstem that controls sound-evoked awakening from sleep.
www.science.org
September 11, 2025 at 6:46 AM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning:

Congratulations to my colleagues Rony Paz, Ido Strauss, Firas Fahoum for landing this exciting paper in Nature!

rdcu.be/eCJLb
Rate and noise in human amygdala drive increased exploration in aversive learning
Nature - Human exploration is driven by two distinct neural mechanisms, a valence-independent rate signal and a valence-dependent global noise signal.
rdcu.be
September 6, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Aperiodic EEG Activity Provides a Linear, Bidirectional, and Spatially Uniform Marker of Subjective and Objective Vigilance in Humans, Both Within and Across States www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Aperiodic EEG Activity Provides a Linear, Bidirectional, and Spatially Uniform Marker of Subjective and Objective Vigilance in Humans, Both Within and Across States
Vigilance is increasingly conceived as a continuum, ranging from full alertness to deep sleep. Despite its fundamental role in cognition, behaviour, and health, reliable physiological markers of vigil...
www.biorxiv.org
September 9, 2025 at 10:16 AM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Slow waves during sleep are fundamental for neural homeostasis and are impaired in neurodegenerative diseases. But what about sleep-like slow waves during wakefulness? Are these slow waves altered in Parkinson's disease? Are these slow waves uncovering psychosis?
Sleep-like slow waves during wakefulness uncover a malignant form of Parkinson’s disease
Slow waves during sleep are fundamental for neural homeostasis, metabolic regulation, and waste clearance, and are known to be altered in neurodegenerative diseases. Sleep-like slow waves (SLSW) have ...
www.medrxiv.org
September 8, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Excited to present our new work reading minds!

Ok, not *that* kind of mind reading, but we have created a deep learning method capable of using single neuron recordings from people watching episodes of TV that can predict when they recall specific memories from the episode. 1/6
August 28, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Fresh results now in bioRxiv! 🎉 We know about the function of NREM sleep for overnight memory consolidation. But what about REM sleep? We found that in aging, slow delta waves can intrude phasic REM periods, and this, is associated with worse overnight consolidation 🧠 (1/5) doi.org/10.1101/2025...
REM Sleep Misfires: Intruding Delta Waves Forecast Tau, Amyloid, and Forgetting in Aging
Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep degrades with age, and more severely in Alzheimer's disease (AD). REM sleep comprises about twenty percent of adult sleep, alternates between phasic and tonic periods, a...
doi.org
August 23, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
#EEGManyLabs website is now live: eegmanylabs.org
A home for our global effort to test the replicability of influential EEG findings, share resources, improve methods in cognitive neuroscience, and grow an open, connected community.
eegmanylabs
eegmanylabs.org
August 20, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Interested in how emotions surface in dreams across the night? In this new paper, Jessica Palmieri, @valentinaelce.bsky.social and I report about the “Nightly dynamics of emotional content in dreams.”

doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
August 15, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Dopamine induces fear extinction by activating the reward-responding amygdala neurons | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Dopamine induces fear extinction by activating the reward-responding amygdala neurons | PNAS
The extinction of conditioned fear responses is crucial for adaptive behavior, and its impairment is a hallmark of anxiety disorders such as posttr...
www.pnas.org
August 16, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
💤🧠🧪 New article! 🧪🧠💤

After years of effort led by @qualiastructure.bsky.social (Nao Tsuchiya and William Wong), Jenny Windt, Katja Valli, Valdas Noreika and @rherzoga.bsky.social, the Dream database is now published in @natcomms.nature.com

**A dream EEG and mentation database**
rdcu.be/eAwni
August 14, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Happy and proud to finally see this out!
I am excited about our new approach to collect episodic memories independent of verbal report. Please reach out if interested!

It was an absolute pleasure working with Omer, Daniel Yuval and all the rest
No one ever steps in the same movie twice. Anticipatory gaze 👁️ indicate episodic memory seconds before an event occurs. 🧠🐾 Very robust effects across both natural and crafted movies, and of course, after sleep! 😴. Out today in Communication Psychology:
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Check it out!
Anticipatory eye gaze as a marker of memory - Communications Psychology
Anticipatory eye movements during repeated movie viewing reveal when and what is remembered. Gaze patterns correlate with explicit reports, offering a method to detect memory for events without verbal...
www.nature.com
August 12, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
Interesting study showing that stress shortens REM sleep through an action of the PFC 🧠💤
www.cell.com/current-biol...
A top-down control of stress-induced REM sleep shortening
Chouvaeff et al. show that social defeat stress recruits prefrontal projections to the VLPO to selectively shorten REM sleep bouts, even after overall REM amounts return to baseline. This pathway prom...
www.cell.com
August 8, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Rotem Falach
What would you like to dream about? Here's a suggestion. Our new paper, co-first-authored by PhD students Daniel Morris and Blaise Elliott, describes a way to provoke lucid dreams about revisiting a profound Virtual-Reality experience - academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...
August 6, 2025 at 3:41 AM