When asthmatics are awake, they can turn to their inhalers to open their airways. But when they sleep, many of them continue to struggle with breathing — and an understanding of their sleep-related problems may help doctors better diagnose and treat their patients’ asthma, according to new University of Michigan Health System research.
Symptoms of sleep apnea and other breathing problems during sleep are common among people with asthma, according to the research presented at the American Thoracic Society’s 2005 International Conference.
The power of a new technique to map connections among nerve cells in the brain has a UT Southwestern Medical Center scientist dreaming of solving the mysteries of sleep.
By tracking which nerve cells in the mouse brain stimulate others, researchers in Japan and at UT Southwestern found that a type of neuron responsible for keeping animals awake receives inhibitory signals from neurons active only during sleep, as well as reinforcing, positive signals from nerve cells that are very active during wakefulness.
Evidence is mounting that sleep, or even a nap, may actually enhance information processing and learning.
New experiments by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grantee Alan Hobson, M.D., Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., and colleagues at Harvard University show that a midday snooze reverses information overload and that a 20 percent overnight improvement in learning a motor skill is largely traceable to a late stage of sleep that some early risers might be missing.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration‘s advisory panel held hearings about using of Provigil (modafinil) for people with obstructive sleep apnea, as well as people suffering shiftwork sleep disorders has announced its decision. A unanimous vote by the panel recommended the use of Provigil for treating excessive daytime sleepiness in people suffering sleep apnea. The vote was [...]
Researchers studying three families with the same unusual sleep pattern have uncovered the first hereditary sleep disorder in humans caused by a single gene. Neurologist Christopher Jones and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Louis Ptácek, both at the University of Utah, are now searching for the gene that causes the disorder known as familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS).
Ptácek and his colleagues concluded that a single gene was responsible for FASPS by studying how the condition was passed along from one generation to the next within the affected families. In this case, inheritance seemed to follow the same simple pattern seen with other single gene traits, such as eye color.
