Sleep

Lead. On October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel and a war erupted that would reshape the region, something less visible also stirred in the bedrooms of a specific group of Israelis. For hundreds of adults whose parents and grandparents had survived the Holocaust, the attack did not just trigger fear for their […]

Infants and toddlers who consistently sleep fewer hours than age-appropriate recommendations face significantly higher odds of developmental delays by age 3, according to a study published July 8 in Frontiers in Public Health that draws on Japan’s largest nationwide birth cohort. The finding adds the weight of population-scale evidence to a question that has long […]

Roughly one in five workers in industrialized economies now works some form of rotating or night schedule, a pattern that fundamentally clashes with the body’s internal circadian clock. The health consequences of shift work have been well documented, from elevated cardiovascular risk to metabolic syndrome. But not everyone who works shifts pays the same price. […]

Lead. A new study provides the first direct neurophysiological evidence that the emotional intensity of our dreams predicts how strongly our brains respond to negative emotional stimuli the next day, but only in people who sleep well. The finding, published July 22 in Sleep, suggests that dream emotions are not merely mental residue but may […]

Lead. What if counting sheep, the classic trick for falling asleep, actually works backwards? A new study suggests that distracting yourself from uncomfortable body sensations before bed may be counterproductive, and that the people who sleep best are the ones who do the opposite: they pay attention. Researchers at a mid-Atlantic university have identified a […]

Here is a strange fact about the human body: if you hand a person a sugar pill, tell them it is medicine, and ask how they feel afterward, roughly one in every seventy five people will report feeling sleepy. This is not a drug effect. It is the placebo machinery at work, producing drowsiness out […]

Think of the roar of a city as heard from a high floor: sirens, traffic, construction, voices, wind. The brain faces a similar flood of information every waking moment, but it must do something far harder than just hearing the noise. It must keep signals straight. A flash of light and the sensation of your […]

Severe sleep disturbances affect the vast majority of people living with Alzheimer’s disease. Sundowning, nighttime wandering, and fragmented sleep are among the most distressing symptoms for both patients and caregivers, and they have long pointed scientists toward a simple hypothesis: the circadian clock must be broken in the Alzheimer’s brain. A new study published in […]

For years, researchers have studied circadian disruption one variable at a time. Night owls get more disease. Short sleepers have higher mortality. People with irregular schedules face metabolic trouble. Each finding has been solid, but partial. Imagine diagnosing engine trouble by listening only to one cylinder. A team led by scientists at the Medical University […]

Lead. The idea that the bacteria living in your gut can influence how well you sleep has moved from intriguing hypothesis to clinically testable therapy. A new randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial published in the Journal of Internal Medicine provides the most rigorous evidence to date that transferring gut microbiota from healthy donors into people with […]