Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainWhen I tell people that I'm a sleep technician, I'm sometimes greeted with a response like "Oh yeah, I'm in alcohol research! Hurdurhurdurhurdur...". Other times I'm now privied to a complete strangers sleeping problems - "I'll wake up in the middle of the night and be in my backyard. Is that weird?". And still other times, people will just go "Whaaaaaa?!". Apparently, the job of sleep technician is not one that most people are intimately familiar - unlike burger flipper (been there, done that, got the grease burns), or used car salesman (I'd rather chew my own arm off).
So I got to wondering, why is it that relatively few people know relatively little about what sleep is? Perhaps the bigger question is why do we, as in scientifically-minded individuals, know so little about what sleep is? It seems absurd that we should know so little about it, and it seems so for two big reasons: it's something we've been doing since we've been around and it's something that everyone does. Don't get me wrong, we do know a lot about sleep and certainly a lot more now than we did 10 years ago - but we still can't answer some of the most basic questions people ask me such as "Why do we dream?" You've seen the Orkin commercials, right? The suburban housewife asks the portly (but not threateningly so) bug-zapper if ants can live for such and such amount of time with their heads lopped off, or some such. Well I get the same questions, except mine are much more inane (i.e. Why do I eat crackers in my sleep?), and my answers are much less convincing.
I think most people tend to take sleep for granted, or at least most people who sleep well. If you have insomnia, or do shift-work, then you know how precious and sweet slumber can be. I think part of the reason, at least from a scientific standpoint is that the methods for quantifying sleep (the polysomnograph) are relatively new, and indeed, the scientific study of sleep is also relatively new when compared to other medical disciplnes.
But I think it's changing. I think I might well start to field a larger number of questions than I am now. Hell, CNN's Sanjay Gupta is doing a special on Sleep at 10pm EST Sunday. A recent study shows that people who sleep longer might actually die sooner. The market for the new non-benzodiazepine hypnotics (like Ambien and Lunesta - yeah, the one with the butterfly) are booming, and just getting bigger.
So who knows, maybe one day when someone asks me why they eat crackers in their sleep I can give them a clear and concise answer, as opposed to rambling on about parasomnias and such.
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If only you could combine the jobs of sleep technician and used car salesman. You'd be rolling in the dough as you wake the poor sleep deprived patients up several times a night to make high powered sales pitches.
I'm not sure how much you're interested but you might want to check out coturnix's (of Science and Politics) hard science blog, Circadiana. coturnix is a biologist who specializes in studying circadian rhythms so he has some good sleep related posts every now and then. For instance, I had no idea that it was normal to have a bimodal sleep pattern.
Now... How come I'm the only one I know who has these really vivid cinematic dreams totally unrelated to my life? 
Well, at least you get a response. When I say I'm studying cognitive/psych. neuroscience, I get the BIG PAUSE and then the "Wow... ok.... UHMMMMM........." which kinda baffles me because having made the transition from art major to science major, it's really not that hard. I have a much tougher time understanding economics or politics or law.
It's easy. I just say that I am a brain surgeon. A few drinks later, when I finally get to explain that it is not human, but bird brains I dig in, and that the purpose is research and not treatments...ah, it's too late by then - she already digs me.
Also, I have mused about the reasons why sleep science is lagging behind circadian research so much in a post titled 'WWDD4' (you can find it on both of my blogs), and it has to do with defining - at the outset - sleep in terms of electrophysiology of human sleep. A comparative, evolutionary approach at the outset would have helped us figure out what sleep is for, thus paving the way for understanding how the brain does it.
Yeah, the thing is is that I *am* a woman and I think even drunk men get a little scared; unless the drunk men are scientists themselves. Unfortunately, drunk men are no fun to talk with, as I did read one study where alcohol imbibing does inhibit glucose metabolism in the brain a little. When I read the article, I was like, "Well, *THAT* explains it..."
I would love to know how sleep works though, and why I can't just survive on four hours of it-- why I need to have at least 6 hours to feel like I'm not half-zombie. 
I'm also wondering if humans have always slept in these long stretches like we do now? Is this 4-8 hour thing per night an evolutionary result? Can we get by with two hours sleep, four hours awake, and just keep doing that, despite the night time/day time affects, or is that physiologically too hard on us? 
