So just what is the brain doing during sleep? We know sleep is necessary to cognition, glucose control, weight, memory, even life asleep. But what’s really going on in there? The layers of information that control and constantly renew the human body are strikingly complex. One of the most useful theories to explicate how was […]
Sleep Loss and the Munchies
An Anatomy of Hunger Unlike marijuana, sleep loss has been entirely legal in all states since the very beginnings of the Constitution. Like marijuana, sleep loss produces a lot of effects you don’t want, ranging from more frequent colds to more common weight gain. But could the actions of brain cannabinoids be common to the effects […]
Going Sleepless to War
Sleepless in Seattle War is hell, said General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose 1864 march to the sea changed the course of American and military history. And the practice of war, even in “peacetime” can be hell on the human body. That is the lesson of a panel at this year’s national sleep meetings in Seattle, […]
Confessions of an air traffic controller (10/28/11)
Asleep in the Tower What caused a senior air traffic controller to fall asleep at Reagen Airport in Washington, D.C. this April, causing two planes to land unassisted and provoking a national transport scandal? Travel – his own. In a report by Rebecca Ruiz at MSNBC, the unnamed supervisor last remembered thinking he should splash […]
Can we evolve to sleep less? (4/11/11)
Can You Really Evolve to Sleep Less? Perhaps – if you’re like a cavefish. Research done at NYU by Professor Richard Borowsky and company, reported last week in Current Biology, looks at a Mexican species of fish that has evolved to live in caves. The cavefish version of Astyanax Mexicanus are also blind. When brought […]