Stay current with discoveries in sleep and dreaming - from circadian research and lucid dreaming to the role of rest in health, wellbeing, and performance.
The thalamus sits at the center of the brain's communication system, keeping sensory input and attention in sync. But when sleep is cut short, this hub begins to falter. New imaging shows how sleep deprivation disrupts thalamocortical networks, unraveling the very connections that hold consciousness together.
Sleep is more than rest - it is the nightly reset that tunes a child's growing mind. New research finds that when sleep quality drops, children lose the flexibility and focus needed for learning, even if memory remains intact.
Dreams don't just vanish at dawn - science can now detect them. Using advanced EEG and AI, researchers have built a system that identifies dream activity during non-REM sleep, paving the way for clinical tools and wearable dream trackers.
Sleep has always been central to human health, but until recently, medicine relied on simple categories to understand it. A new article in Sleep highlights how artificial intelligence and modern data analytics are transforming the field. By moving beyond traditional sleep staging, researchers are uncovering richer insights into how sleep relates to conditions ranging from heart disease to depression. The future of sleep medicine, the authors argue, is already here.
Dementia may leave its first traces in the bedroom, not the clinic. A new study finds that changes in sleep duration, daily rhythm, and napping habits can appear years before memory loss, making sleep a potential early warning sign of cognitive decline.
Sleep disturbances are one of the most common - and frustrating - features of aging. As people grow older, they spend less time in deep sleep and experience more nighttime awakenings. A new study reports that Centella asiatica, a plant long used in traditional medicine, can partially reverse these changes in aged mice, improving both the quality and stability of sleep.