Featured series 
Tag: Sleep
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Nation & World
Probing sleep’s drowsy mystery
Harvard researchers have worked for years to understand better the familiar mystery of sleep, highlighting not only what happens when we close our eyes, but also the effects on us when we don’t.
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Nation & World
What wakes me
Clifford Saper, chair of neurology at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center recently discovered a brainstem area that senses oxygen dips and drives waking.
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Nation & World
Giving phobias a rest
A Harvard-led research team has found that exposure therapy for irrational fear of spiders seems to be more effective if it is followed by sleep, according to a recent study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
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Nation & World
Bleary America needs some shut-eye
Cranky, sleep-deprived America got some advice from experts at a Harvard School of Public Health Forum: Get some rest, and reap the health and productivity benefits shown in numerous scientific studies.
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Nation & World
A winter wellness workout
Dozens of Harvard undergraduates started the year with a new emphasis on wellness, thanks to the Optimal Health program. With presentations from a lifestyle medicine consultant, a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a sleep specialist, and a stress manager, Optimal Health emphasized prevention and fitness.
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Nation & World
Senior relief
Harvard offers a wealth of resources to help seniors manage stress and get as much from their last year of college as they have from their first three.
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Nation & World
Scientists Unravel Secrets of Sound Sleep
Researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) find that people’s brain rhythms during sleep may hold the answer to sleeping through loud noise.
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Nation & World
Catching up on lost sleep a dangerous illusion
People who are chronically sleep-deprived may think they’re caught up after a 10-hour night of sleep, but new research shows that although they’re near-normal when they awake, their ability to function deteriorates markedly as night falls…
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Nation & World
Chronic sleep loss degrades nighttime performance
Although the exact function of sleep remains unknown, sleep is clearly necessary for optimal cognitive performance, learning, and memory.
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Nation & World
Want to live well?
Harvard faculty members from a range of fields give tips on how to live healthy.
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Nation & World
Older adults found to fare better under sleep deprivation than younger adults
In a recent sleep study testing alertness and performance in sleep-deprived adults, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) determined that healthy older adults handle sleep deprivation better than younger…
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Nation & World
Obesity linked to dangerous sleep apnea in truck drivers
Truck crashes are a significant public health hazard, causing thousands of deaths and injuries each year, with driver fatigue and sleepiness being major causes. A new study by Harvard researchers…
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Nation & World
Researchers find potential cause of heart risks for shift workers
Harvard researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and colleagues have identified the potential cause of the increased risk for cardiovascular and metabolic disease in shift workers. The researchers found…
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Nation & World
Less sleep, more TV leads to fat toddlers
Infants and toddlers who sleep less than 12 hours a day are twice as likely to become overweight by age 3 than children who sleep longer. In addition, high levels of television viewing combined with less sleep elevate the risk, so that children who sleep less than 12 hours and who view two or more…
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Nation & World
Link between deep sleep and visual learning
A relationship has been observed between deep sleep and the ability of the brain to learn specific tasks. Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have now shown that the processes that regulates deep sleep may affect visual learning. These results are published in the March 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
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Nation & World
Selective attention most impaired during first night shift worked
Our biological propensity for keeping awake during the day and sleeping at night makes night work a challenge. Now, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that attention is especially affected during the first night shift. This research appears in the Nov. 28 issue of the Public Library of Science One.
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Nation & World
Shift workers most impaired on first night shift following day shifts
Researchers at Harvard Medical School affiliate Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that the attention of shift workers is most impaired on the first night shift following a string…
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Nation & World
Sleep found to repair and reorganize the brain
Most of us do it every night but we don’t know why. If you miss too many nights, it might kill you. We know why we eat, drink, breathe, and move around, but no one can explain why we need to sleep. What does seven or eight hours of snoozing really do for us? Van…
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Nation & World
Study shows importance of sleep for optimal memory functioning
Harvard researchers have tracked fatigue’s footsteps on the human brain, showing that sleeplessness impairs the ability to learn new information and that abnormal brain function, not reduced alertness, is the cause.
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Nation & World
Sleeping your way to heart health
A new Harvard School of Public Health study indicates that there’s more than just olive oil and red wine keeping heart disease rates down in Mediterranean countries. There’s the naps, too.
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Nation & World
Interns continue to work overly long shifts, study finds
That intern working on you at the hospital may be so sleep-deprived his or her performance is no better than that of a drunk. That’s one conclusion of a national study by investigators at the Harvard Medical School.
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Nation & World
Melatonin most effective for sleep when taken for off-hour sleeping
Researchers from the Divisions of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have found in a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical study that melatonin, taken orally during non-typical…
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Nation & World
When the blues keep you awake
Your eyes do more than see. Researchers at Harvard Medical School demonstrated this by showing that your eyes are part of a light reception system that can keep you alert…
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Nation & World
Waking up to how we sleep and dream
The Oct. 27, 2005 issue of the prestigious science journal Nature devotes almost 40 pages to bringing readers up-to-date on what happens during sleep. Three of the articles are by Harvard Medical School scientists who discuss such things as an on-off sleep switch, and learning while we sleep.
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Nation & World
Investigating phenomenon of sleep
Alexander Schier’s transparent fish are helping him understand the basic secrets of human development: how early embryonic cells communicate so that some develop into heart tissue, some into brain cells, and others into tissues that form the rest of the body.
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Nation & World
Study says therapy better than pills in treating sleep-onset insomnia
The findings show non-drug techniques yield better short- and long-term results than the most widely prescribed sleeping pill, zolpidem, commonly known as Ambien. “Sleeping pills are the most frequent treatment…
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Nation & World
New stage of memory found
It’s been known for a while that sleep helps consolidate certain memories; that’s probably a major purpose of sleep. But the latest experiments by Harvard Medical School researchers show that…
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Nation & World
Blue light special
Jet-setters and shift workers now sit in front of glaring white lights to readjust their body rhythms and avoid sleep and alertness problems. New experiments condcuted by Harvard University researchers…
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Nation & World
Researchers find that sleep deprivation or excess in women may be associated with increased risk of coronary artery disease
Chronic sleep deprivation is common in today’s society. It is reported that a third of Americans sleep six or less hours per day. Previous research has shown that the effects…