Rocking-induced sleep enhancement promotes motor learning through transcriptional and synaptic remodelling

Abstract Growing evidence shows that sleep can be enhanced in a non-invasive, drug-free manner through sensory stimulation. While modalities such as auditory and vestibular stimulation effectively increase sleep, the cognitive and cellular consequences of such enhancement remain unclear. Here, we investigated the effects of vestibular stimulation via rocking on sleep architecture, motor learning, cortical gene expression, and synaptic organization in the motor cortex. Eleven consecutive days of rocking enhanced sleep in mice, increasing both sleep duration and consolidation. These improvements were accompanied by greater motor learning performance, and the degree of learning enhancement positively correlated with total sleep amount. At the molecular level, improved learning was associated with transcriptional changes in genes involved in glutamatergic signalling and synaptic plasticity, alongside an increased density of excitatory synapses in the motor cortex. Together, these findings demonstrate that sleep enhancement via rocking facilitates learning by promoting neuroplastic mechanisms in the motor cortex.