Evolution has reduced the quantity and boosted the quality
of human sleep relative to other primates, they hold.
If true, the results suggest that
human sleep patterns evolved by around 300 million years ago in a common ancestor of birds, mammals and reptiles.
But given how
complex human sleep is, it's likely that there are several different causes for insomnia, even among people who take the same drugs.
There are two basic types of sleep
for human sleep cycles known as REM and non-REM sleep.
But now researchers reporting in Current Biology on December 28 have found a way to capture detailed information on
human sleep cycles over long periods of time while individuals slumber at home in their usual way.
According to Matthew Walker, director of the Center for
Human Sleep Science at the University of...
The protein, called melanopsin, first came to light during studies of melatonin, a hormone associated
with human sleep cycles, says Ignacio Provencio, a neurobiologist at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.
According to Beco Pets co-founder George Bramble, «There are many dogs with allergies to synthetic materials, so making the cover out of natural materials, much
like humans sleeping on cotton sheets, we felt was the right thing to do.
If we can study the biochemical pathways their brains are using and find out how these flies manage with so little sleep, we might eventually find a way to make
human sleep more efficient and restorative.
The mechanics of
human sleep remains a scientific mystery, but the fact that we need sleep is incontrovertible.
I waded through stacks of books bursting with information
about human sleep, but all lacked specific solutions to the sleeping - through - the - night - without - crying - it - out dilemma.
«No Tears» or «Fading» Elizabeth Pantley, author of the book «No - Cry Sleep Solution,» tells us the «No Tears» approach exchanges goal - oriented rigidity for a deeper appreciation of
human sleep systems.
An apparent rise in the proportion of
human sleep devoted to REM resulted mainly from a hefty decline in non-REM sleep, the scientists say.
Sleep in a comparative context: Investigating how
human sleep differs from sleep in other primates.
If the findings hold up, Capellini suspects that sleeping for the most part in one major bout per day, rather than in several episodes of varying durations as some primates do, substantially
lessened human sleep time.
The findings are the latest in a larger,
ongoing human sleep project, designed to learn more about sleep and its essential role in our lives by collecting sleep data on thousands of people in the real world.
The Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC), a research initiative exploring the utility of genetic information in the clinical setting, has published a study and identified six noteworthy genes that affect
human sleep duration.
For researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging in Cologne, the sleeplessness experienced by the fruit fly Drosophila is therefore a model case for
human sleeping behavior.
Tens of thousands of years ago,
modern humans slept around with Neandertals and swapped some genes.
The findings «demonstrate the salutary effects of blocking CSE during apnea and point to a potential therapeutic strategy for
human sleep apnea,» according to the authors.
Chang: As a graduate student, I researched circadian rhythm disorders resulting from
different human sleep patterns, particularly those of early and late sleepers.
The findings may offer insight
into human sleep disorders and open up new strategies to promote long - lasting sleep for those with chronic insomnia who don't respond to available sleep drugs, they say.
«In natural conditions, humans sleep [more] during a period of declining temperature,» Siegel said.
Determining the genes responsible may help solve mysteries
surrounding human sleep, and help people suffering from sleep disorders.
Applying this trick to more than 20,000 days» worth of wrist monitor data from 574 people produced what the researchers call «the first large - scale analysis of
human sleep dynamics in real life.»
In his book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, A. Roger Ekirch explains that
historically humans slept in two shifts: one for a few hours when the sun went down, and another from the early hours of the morning until dawn.
The Center for
Human Sleep Science found that getting less than seven hours of sleep a nigh can be linked to medical ailments like cancer, obesity and poor mental health.
«The lunar cycle seems to
influence human sleep, even when one does not «see» the moon and is not aware of the actual moon phase,» says Christian Cajochen of the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel.
The investigation of self - reported sleep patterns and nighttime temperatures across the United States is one of the first studies to provide evidence that rising temperatures, driven by climate change, could
affect human sleep.
As the director of the Center
for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and having spent more than two decades doing sleep research, Walker says there is a strong connection between lack of sleep and disease.
The study, conducted using fruit fly populations bred to model natural variations in
human sleep patterns, provides new clues to how genes for sleep duration are linked to a wide variety of biological processes.
Unlike conventional sleeping aids that are designed to just put people to sleep quickly, SleepCycle targets each phase
of human sleep with nutrients and plant compounds that have been shown to gently support the quality and duration of deep, restorative sleep, aiding the body in recovering from daily physical and mental stresses.
Dr. Matthew Walker is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Founder and Director of the Center for
Human Sleep Science.
Natural sleep aid: through the presence of melatonin,
a human sleep regulating hormone also found in certain plants.
Toward a comparative developmental ecology of
human sleep.
Before that
the human sleep mechanisms are not completely formed.