Sleep

Frequent Lucid Dreaming Linked to Distinct Grey-White Matter Brain Networks A new neuroimaging study reveals that people who frequently experience lucid dreams have distinct structural signatures in their brains, involving coordinated differences in both grey matter and white matter across regions tied to self-awareness, mental imagery, and voluntary control. The findings, published in the Journal […]

A new study suggests that the amount of time a person spends in REM sleep is tied to their general level of anxiety, and that this relationship plays out differently depending on their sex and age. Researchers in Spain recruited 128 healthy adults aged 18 to 82, tracked their sleep with consumer wearables, and measured […]

For more than two decades, the diagnosis of narcolepsy type 1 has rested on a single laboratory measurement: the concentration of the neuropeptide hypocretin-1 (orexin-A) in cerebrospinal fluid, determined by radioimmunoassay. A value below 110 pg/mL is considered diagnostic. But the assay itself has long been a source of unease. Radioimmunoassay (RIA) does not measure […]

The gut microbiome has emerged as a potential intermediary in virtually every domain of human health, from metabolism to immunity to brain function. Whether it also plays a meaningful role in sleep and circadian disorders is the question addressed by a new scoping review in Sleep Medicine, which systematically mapped the available evidence across insomnia, […]

Cannabinol (CBN), a mildly psychoactive cannabinoid marketed as a natural sleep aid, did not significantly reduce wake after sleep onset (WASO) in a rigorous randomized controlled trial. However, the higher dose tested improved several secondary measures of sleep quality. Lead CBN has gained popularity as a non-prescription sleep supplement, often sold in oils, gummies, and […]

A new study from the University of Haifa provides the first real-world evidence quantifying how artificial light at night (ALAN) and noise together degrade sleep quality in adolescents. The findings show effects roughly twice as large as those previously reported in adults. What they found Researchers recruited 81 adolescents aged 13 to 18 living in […]

Source: Liu K, Sun B, Wang BK, Chen J, Westover MB, Tian FY, Sun H, Kong XJ. (2026). An Electroencephalographic Study of Sleep Spindle and Infraslow Oscillation in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of Sleep Research, 35(4), e70309. DOI: 10.1111/jsr.70309. Open Access (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Sleep spindles are brief bursts of oscillatory brain activity […]

Dietary counseling for patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) improved diet quality over six months, but this did not translate into better sleep outcomes, according to a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial published in the Journal of Sleep Research. The Study Verkaar and colleagues conducted a secondary analysis of a six-month, two-arm, parallel randomized […]

Noise-induced wakefulness traced to a thalamic-septal circuit in mice For millions of people who live near traffic, construction, or noisy neighbors, the experience is all too familiar: a sudden sound jolts you from sleep, and you lie awake wondering if you will drift back off. A study published July 2 in iScience now identifies the […]

Circadian clock gene homolog shapes neural circuit development in C. elegans, but developmental sleep may not be essential Sleep is widely assumed to be essential for brain development. Across the animal kingdom, from worms to humans, developing brains spend large portions of time in a sleep-like state, and disrupting sleep early in life has been […]