slow wave sleep strengthened LOCALLY in areas that learn
Reto Huber, M. Felice Ghilardi, Marcello Massimini and Giulio Tononi found that the strength of slow wave activity (SWA) during sleep increases LOCALLY in areas that learned something during the day....
View ArticleEvidence that flies sleep
Their sleep cycle can be different than just their circadian rhythm: if you sleep deprive ’em, they need more sleep. A bunch of molecular similarities, too (i.e. some sleep-related drugs do the same...
View ArticleSynchrony in SCN via gap junctions
Neat article in this month’s Nature Neuroscience on how gap junctions (ie. direct, non-synaptic coupling) between neurons in the superchiasmatic nucleus might be responsible for their millisecond-scale...
View ArticleAmpakine CX717 improves delayed match to sample performance
Scientific Clearing House: Mind enhancing drugs Apparently, CX717, an ampakine developed by Cortex Pharmaceuticals, shows some signs of preventing the cognitive impairment brought on by sleep...
View ArticleOn the function of sleep
The nice NYT article on the function of sleep follows on a recent NIH-funded Nature insight series. Some interesting facts from the NYT article: Sleep patterns vary greatly. Some bats sleep 20 hours,...
View ArticleForest for the trees?
On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect — Dijksterhuis et al. 311 (5763): 1005 — Science I don’t know quite what to make of this. In fact, I just don’t understand what is...
View ArticleCX717: Preventing sleep deprivation trauma
Intelligent Life 2006 | From A to Zzzzz Introducing CX717, a drug being developed by Cortex Pharmaceuticals of Irvine, California. It’s the first of what promises to be many aimed at detaching people...
View ArticleOpenStim: The Open Noninvasive Brain Stimulator
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a popular technology for stimulating human cortical neurons, due to its safety, noninvasiveness, and efficacy. A TMS device is just a little coil of wire,...
View ArticleWNYC’s Radio Lab is Back for Season 3
Read on for a guest-posted ad for WNYC’s radio lab (http://www.radiolab.org) Through its innovative structure, WNYC’s RADIO LAB (www.radiolab.org) blends storytelling, interviews with top scientists,...
View ArticleLocal sleep in awake rats
this experiment claims to show that (1) when rats are sleep-deprived, small populations of rat brain neurons can fall asleep while the rest of the rat is awake, and (2) this may correspond to...
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