Featured series 
Tag: Sleep
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Health
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 adults. The findings appeared online on May 3, in an advance online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. After an extended period…
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Health
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 has confirmed previous findings that obesity-driven testing strategies identify commercial truck drivers with a high likelihood of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and suggests that mandating…
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Science & Tech
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 that misalignment between the internal biological clock and the sleep/wake and fasting/feeding cycles, known as circadian misalignment, resulted in hormonal and metabolic changes that, if…
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Health
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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Health
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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Health
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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Health
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 of day shifts. This research appears in the November 28, 2007 edition of the Public Library of Science ONE. “It is important to identify this…
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Health
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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Health
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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Health
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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Health
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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Health
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 sleep times, significantly improves an individual’s ability to sleep. This finding is particularly important for rotating or night-shift workers, travelers with jet lag and individuals…
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Campus & Community
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 when sleep starts to fog your brain. When the researchers exposed people to blue light at night, this system immediately increased their alertness and performance…
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Campus & Community
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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Campus & Community
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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Health
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 for insomnia, yet CBT techniques clearly were more successful in helping the majority of study participants to become normal sleepers,” said study leader Gregg Jacobs.…
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Campus & Community
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 a good night’s rest can enhance your performance as much as 20-30 percent. Not all memories, just those of motor skills such as riding a…
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Science & Tech
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 suggest that they would be better off sitting in front of blue lights. The research also contradicts what many scientists believed for years, that the…
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Health
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 of short-term reduced sleep duration include increased blood pressure, heart rate variability, decreased glucose tolerance and increased cortisol levels. Yet, little is known about how…
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Health
Practice makes perfect
Harvard Medical School researchers conducted a study in which people were taught to type a sequence of keys on a computer keyboard as quickly and accurately as possible. A group trained in the morning and then re-tested 12 hours later were able to improve their performance by about two percent. However, the performance of those…
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Health
Are you an ‘early bird’ or a ‘night owl’?
Harvard researchers working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have found that whether someone is a morning person or an evening person depends on a basic aspect of the circadian timing system that is known as intrinsic period. The study was published in the August 2001 issue of “Behavioral Neuroscience. “While some have argued that extremes…
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Health
A new reason to sleep on it
In findings published in the December 2000 issue of Nature Neuroscience, a team of Harvard Medical School scientists found that people who stay up all night after learning and practicing a new task show little improvement in their performance. That means that school kids who are cutting back on sleep to finish ever mounting piles…
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Health
Researchers learn to control dreams
For years, scientists have been stymied in their quest to understand dreams because they are unique events that cannot be replicated.