Show Notes
To access all episodes plus 150+ hours of advanced psychiatric education, join the Academy today. Get access here: https://www.academy.psychscene.com/ In this episode, we explore a groundbreaking 2025 Neuron paper that reframes how sleep is generated in the brain, and why we sleep at all.
Instead of a single “sleep centre,” sleep emerges from a distributed network embedded within motor and autonomic circuits. The authors also propose a unifying “catecholamine hypothesis” explaining sleep’s restorative functions across brain, immune, and metabolic systems.
We break down what this means for clinicians, how it updates classic models of sleep–wake regulation, and why dysfunction in these systems manifests across psychiatry. To access all episodes of this podcast plus 150+ hours of advanced psychiatric education, join the Academy today. Get access here: https://www.academy.psychscene.com/
More from Thinking In Psychiatry
View the mentioned paper here: Memantine to Treat Social Impairment in Youths With Autism Spectrum Disorder https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2839518 Access the mentioned course here: Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Comprehensive Guide to Clinical Assessment & Diagnosis https://psychscene.co/4zXOHNW In this video, Dr Sanil Rege examines a 2025 randomised controlled trial of memantine for social impairment in young people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Access mentioned course here: Advanced Psychiatric Formulation and Strategic Management Masterclass https://psychscene.co/3Rn0Sm3 Here is the link to the paper mentioned: Towards a Consensus Roadmap for a New Diagnostic Framework for Mental Disorders https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924977X24007168 In this episode, Dr Sanil Rege examines a 2025 ECNP consensus roadmap calling for psychiatry to move beyond descriptive diagnosis towards biology-informed, transdiagnostic, and mechanism-based models. He explores how circuit biomarkers, inflammation, genomic overlap, digital phenotyping, and machine learning may refine patient stratification, treatment selection, and relapse prediction across traditional diagnostic boundaries. This video provides clinicians with a neurobiological framework for shifting from label-based treatment to mechanism-informed formulation in psychiatric practice.
Here are the links to the papers mentioned: Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder Ren et. al.
Access the mentioned courses here: Sleep And Psychiatry: