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Why Do We Need to Sleep?

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Why Do We Need to Sleep?

At a shiny new lab in Japan, an international team of scientists is trying to figure out what puts us under.

The Atlantic,

5 min read
5 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Sleep is a biological necessity. But why?

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Scientific
  • Applicable
  • Eye Opening

Recommendation

Most people obsess over sleep only when they don’t get enough. Not so the 120 scientists at Japan’s International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine. They brood over the purpose and basic mechanisms behind sleep. Which genes make your circadian clock tick, and which neurotransmitters make it tock? getAbstract recommends Veronique Greenwood’s article to the sleepless and the somnolent.

Summary

“What is the physical substrate of sleepiness?”

Early in the 20th century, a French scientist prevented a group of dogs from sleeping for 10 days. He then drew fluid from the brains of tired canines and injected it into well-rested peers’s brains – who immediately fell asleep. What substance in the fluid had transplanted the sleepiness from one animal to the other?

Researchers at Japan’s International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine in Tsukuba...

About the Author

Veronique Greenwood has written for Discover, Scientific American, Popular Science, The New Yorker, Time, The Atlantic, and others.


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