HISTORICAL NOTE: Frédéric Bremer 1892–1982: a pioneer in sleep research

Abstract 

Frédéric Bremer was one of the pioneer neurophysiologists who dedicated their career to understanding the neural mechanisms involved in the control of sleep–wake regulation. This paper follows his career and his major achievements. We found that Bremer's interest in sleep resulted from his unexpected observations after transecting the brain at the midcollicular level in the “encéphale isolé” preparation. The sleep-like behaviour of the animal, accompanied by slow waves in the cortex, convinced him that sleep resulted from cortical deafferentation. He was further convinced that deafferentation was the cause of sleep when he found that transecting the brain at the medullary level did not much affect the sleep–wake cycle. As we show, Bremer's views that sleep is a passive phenomenon imposed on the brain because of deafferentation was shared by most of his contemporaries. Years later Bremer admitted that he interpreted his experimental findings wrongly. He continued to investigate sleep using his preparations and made important contributions to understanding the relationships between the brainstem reticular formation and the basal forebrain hypnogenic centres, as well as the importance of light on these relationships.

Keywords: Bremer, encéphale isolé, cerveau isolé, sleep, deafferentation.

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• f1 Correspondence should be addressed to: Myriam Kerkhofs; Fax: +3271295226. Email mkerkhof@ulb.ac.be.