Scarlet gave him twenty seven stitches in his head
Do you sleep like a baby? You may have your thalamus to thank, according to research that suggests this brain region helps people sleep through bumps in the night.
To discover why some people can sleep through noise while others awake at the faintest disruption, Jeffrey Ellenbogen and colleagues at Harvard Medical School used electrodes to monitor the brain activity of 12 people while they slept in a pitch-black, soundproof room. They then repeated the experiment, this time playing 14 sounds, such as a toilet flushing and street traffic, at 30-second intervals, increasing the volume until the volunteers’ brainwaves showed signs of arousal.
Sleepers who tolerated louder sounds before waking showed a higher frequency of “sleep spindles” – short bursts of activity of specific wavelength – during non-REM sleep than those who woke more easily.
The spindles arise in the brain’s sensory relay centre in the thalamus.
{ NewScientist | Continue reading }
• If a vast conspiracy were afoot to create an entire civilization of insomniacs, it would operate pretty much the way our society does now.
• Relentless stress in the high-tech workplace of the 21st century is taking an unprecedented toll on our emotional lives and our capacity to wind down at the end of the day.
• Our widespread fear of and disregard for darkness -both literal and figurative- may be the most overlooked factor in the contemporary epidemic of sleep disorders.
{ A Nation of Insomniacs: The Lost Art of Sleep | Psychotherapy Networker | Continue reading }
photo { Kyoko Hamada }
