Schizophrenia spectrum disorders and quality of wakefulness ; local sleep, a new endophenotype?

Fundamental knowledge about schizophrenia spectrum disorders has continued to increase over the past decades without leading to new treatments. Based on the effect of xanomeline on the quality of wakefulness, we revisit the model of the psychiatric effects of sleep deprivation and establish a link between the increased theta activity, the most consistent feature of the patients' resting state EEG, and recent data on local sleep physiology. This lays the foundations for a new physiological mechanism accounting for all the disorders caused by this disease (cognitive impairment, positive and negative symptoms). We indicate how this mechanism can be proven and how, if demonstrated, it opens the way to new targeted treatments.