For our end of season special, we have the rest of the NaPS lab in to answer a number of exciting sleep-related questions from our listeners. These touch on a range of different subjects from sleeps involvement in weight gain to alcohol's effect on sleep. Thanks to those who sent in questions!List of Questions:1. What is it in general anaesthetic that completely prevents a patient from waking up mid-surgery? Is this a similar state to being in a deep sleep or is this differ...
Mar 9, 2022
28 min
In this episode, we talk with Professor Chiara Cirelli from the department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin. We begin by hearing about how she first got interested in sleep research, and particularly about her time as a medical student at the University of Pisa where she worked on the noradrenergic system using cat models. We then look at the importance of using cross-species models in sleep research with flies, mice, rats and humans. We also discuss the different ways of using th...
Jan 13, 2022
55 min
In this episode, we interviewed Professor Reto Huber, who leads a research group at the University Children’s Hospital, Zurich. Reto’s interests encompass sleep disorders, development, synaptic plasticity and regeneration. In this episode we discuss local sleep, a process whereby different parts of the brain express different depths of sleep or wake at different times. We consider the relationship of local sleep to phenomena such as sleep walking and sleep talking, and Reto explains a se...
Sep 25, 2021
53 min
In this episode we talk to Professor Manuel Schabus and Professor Kerstin Hoedlmoser from the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Salzburg. In this episode, we discuss their work on the development of sleep-in babies, first discussing what baby sleep is like and how it differs from older children and adults in regard to activity and sleep stages and specifically sleep spindles and why we think this is. We also look at the difficulties of recording sleep in ...
Sep 13, 2021
44 min
In this episode, we talk to Professor Wenbiao Gan from the Neuroscience and Physiology and Skirball Institute at New York University School of Medicine.Professor Gan tells us about how he started to become interested in studying sleep and its impact on learning and memory.He talks about intriguing and hands-on ways to assess the formation and elimination of dendritic spines in the mouse cortex, and how different experimental tasks like running backwards on a treadmill influence spine fo...
Sep 1, 2021
42 min
In this episode, we interviewed Colin Espie, one of the world’s leading authorities on sleep and insomnia. Colin is Professor in Sleep Medicine at the University of Oxford, and Clinical Director of the Experimental & Clinical Sleep Medicine Programme, Sleep & Circadian Neurosciences Institute, again at the University of Oxford. Professor Espie talks about sleep problems, explains why actively focusing on getting more sleep is not the best way to combat these issues. ...
Jul 15, 2021
50 min
In this episode, we talk to Professor Tore Nielsen from the University of Montreal and Professor Mark Blagrove from Swansea University.In part 2 of this two part episode, we carry on our discussion about nightmares and talk about Tore's work on imagery rehearsal. A process where the dreamer rehearses their nightmares finding solutions to them in waking life in order to reduce stress and anxiety around nightmares and find more control in their dream life. Then we move on to lucid dreamin...
Jul 7, 2021
44 min
In this episode, we talk to Dr Tristan Bekinschtein from the Cambridge Consciousness and Cognition Lab and discuss his research looking into the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness. We talk about his work in the loss of consciousness in vegetative state patients, sedation and sleep and his findings regarding brain markers which indicate when we change between these two states. We also discuss his research showing that people tend to neglect the left side of the world...
May 27, 2021
54 min
In this episode, we talk to Professor Tore Nielsen from the University of Montreal and Professor Mark Blagrove from Swansea University. In part 1 of this two part episode, we talk about how both our guests became interested in the world of sleep and dreams and then discuss what we actually dream about, from emotional REM dreams to non-rem dreams. We also talk about the different methods of collecting dream reports and the positives and negatives of these methods. We go on to discu...
May 24, 2021
45 min
Today's episode is a little bit different. We're marking the end of our first season by roping in the rest of the NaPS lab to answer listeners' sleep-related questions. Thanks to everyone who sent questions in!List of questions:Why do we use the term ‘sleeping like a baby’ when babies don’t, in fact, sleep? - From Jaime Jenkins How do hormones affect sleep?- From Beth LeeWhy do some people talk in their sleep? – From Christopher ReynoldsCan meditation before bed help you have deeper sleep? - ...
Dec 22, 2020
23 min
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