The Role Of Stochasticity In Fruit Fly Sleep

Sleep is an essential part of our daily life and it is critical for cognition and memory. A large network of neurons carry out the fundamental function of optimizing the duration of sleep against intrinsic fluctuations and environmental changes. The circadian clock modulates activity to light dark cycle and the sleep homeostat regulates the sleep debt through sleep duration. We model the sleep–wake dynamics of Drosophila melanogaster using a mean-reverting stochastic process, where the deterministic mean-reverting component represents homeostatic control and the stochastic term captures neuronal variability. By silencing/hyperexciting neurons implicated in sleep homeostasis, we test how this disruption affects the deterministic and stochastic structure of sleep bouts. Our results reveal how noise and feedback jointly shape sleep homeostasis, offering a quantitative framework that connects neuronal dynamics to behavioral regulation.