Health: Sleep

Sleep is supposed to be a time of peace and relaxation. Most of us drift from our waking lives into predictable cycles of deep, non-rapid-eye-movement sleep, followed by dream-filled rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. But when the boundaries of these three phases of arousal get fuzzy, sleep can be downright scary. In fact, some sleep disorders seem more at home in horror films than in your bedroom.

Even in deep sleep, sounds make their way into our minds, researchers have found, and enhance associated memories.

Whether they blame it on the kids, stress, or the lure of the Internet, most Americans feel like they’re not getting enough sleep.

Good news for procrastinating students: a nasal spray developed by a team of German scientists promises to give late night cram sessions a major boost, if a good night's sleep follows. In a research report featured as the cover story of the October 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, these scientists show that a molecule from the body's immune system (interleukin-6) when administered through the nose helps the brain retain emotional and procedural memories during REM sleep.

A protein implicated in as a cause of Alzheimer's Disease increases in mice while they are away and declines while they are asleep. The implication here is that people who do not get enough sleep may be at increased risk of Alzheimer's.

We may think we are asleep -- but deep in the recesses of our mind a "memory editor" is working overtime, replaying the experiences of the day and storing the highlights on our brain's version of a video recorder, claim scientists.

Catching a cold? Maybe that's Mother Nature's way of telling you to stay home and get some sleep for a change. A new study conducted at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has found that people who get fewer than seven hours of sleep a night are 300% more likely to catch colds.

A California dream researcher has proven something that wouldn't surprise Mozart or Keith Richards. It's that dreaming is a great way to solve creative problems.

Many people don't get as much sleep as they should. And their brains are paying the price.

By listening in on the chatter between neurons in various parts of the brain, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have taken steps toward fully understanding just how memories are formed, transferred, and ultimately stored in the brain -- and how that process varies throughout the various stages of sleep.