Topic: Sleep in the News

Why it’s Hard to Wake Up on a Cold Morning

With summer right around the corner it seems like an odd time of year to be talking about it, but researchers say they’ve determined why our bodies don’t like to wake up on a cold morning.   Researchers at Northwestern University say we have a lot to learn about the link between sensory neurons and neurons…
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Don’t Just Sit There. Sleep Instead!

Moving more and sitting less was a challenge for many of us even before states started issuing stay-at-home orders. Despite disruptions to our daily work and exercise routines, there are some subtle changes we can make at home to help improve our mental health, and one of them includes sleep. Essentially, the research indicates that…
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When You’re Dreaming, Your Brain Tunes Out the World

French and Australian scientists have shown for the first tie how the brain suppresses information from the outside world, such as the sound of a conversation, during the sleep phase linked to dreaming. This ability could be one of the protective mechanisms of dreams. While we dream, we invent worlds that bear no relation to…
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New Research Watches Brain Replay Experiences During Sleep

When we fall asleep, our brains aren’t offline, they’re busy organizing new memories — and now, scientists have gotten a glimpse of the process. Researchers report in all new research the first direct evidence that human brains replay waking experiences while asleep. During sleep, the brain replays neural firing patterns experienced while awake, also known…
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Lack of Teen Sleep Can Cause “Loss of Pleasure”

Sleep patterns around the world have been disrupted as screen time increases and sleep routines change with COVID-19 self-isolation requirements. Negative mood is not unusual in adolescence, but lack of sleep can affect mental health, causing anhedonia (or loss of pleasure), anxiety, anger and significantly increasing the risk of depression, a global study of more…
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Survey: COVID-19 Pandemic is Significantly Reducing Our Sleep

According to new research that compares our sleep habits in January of 2020 to March of the same year, the COVID-19 pandemic is causing our quality of sleep to significantly decline. “The 2020 State of America’s Sleep” study was conducted by The Better Sleep Council (BSC), the consumer education arm of the International Sleep Products…
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Does Obesity Actually Lead to Sleep Loss?

Can staying up late make you fat? A growing body of research has suggested that poor sleep quality is linked to an increased risk of obesity by deregulating appetite, which in turn leads to more calorie consumption. But a new study published this week found that the direction of this reaction might actually be flipped:…
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Babies Retain More Information After Naps Than Previously Thought

New first-of-its-kind research from Germany shows that babies build their episodic memory when they nap. What this means is that they are able to remember the details of their individual experiences after napping. The scientists examined this relationship using a three-phase study. During the learning phase, the 14 to 17-month-old children in the study were…
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Early Bedtime Helps Children Maintain Healthy Weight

Going to bed early and following a consistent bedtime routine may help reduce children’s risk of becoming overweight or obese, according to a new study. In the study of 1,258 Indigenous Australian children with an average age of 6 years, children who consistently went to bed late experienced greater weight gain over several years than…
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We’re More Negative When We Haven’t Slept

Much of what we see on the news is negative, and these days it’s even more so.  If you’re not getting enough sleep, everything seems even worse. New research shows that we perceive neutral items far more negatively when we haven’t slept well.  In the study, participants were tested the morning after five nights of…
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