There are many theories about why we sleep and dream, and many of these involve memory in some way (including Freud’s theory of why we dream). A relatively recent theory has been gathering support, variously called synaptic renormalisation hypothesis or synaptic homeostasis hypothesis (aka ‘SHY’ – first proposed by Tononi and Corelli, 2003). The basic […]
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In our A2 Complete Companion we reported a study by Knutsson et al. (1986) who found that shift workers were three times more likely to develop heart disease than non-shift workers. A study just published by Hackam et al. ( 2012 ) confirms this, claiming a 24% increased risk of a coronary event and 5% increased risk of stroke. […]
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Today’s BBC website carries a fascinating article that challenges the commonly held view that an eight-hour period of continuous sleep is natural for human beings. We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night – but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history […]
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In Chapter 1 (Biological rhythms and sleep) of our A2 Complete Companion there is a contradiction (kindly pointed out by Ruth Bailey of Akeley Wood School). On page 13 the text says that dolphins don’t have REM sleep whereas on page 14 the graph indicates a significant amount of REM sleep in dolphin. So which […]
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Recently published sleep research suggests that adolescents who cut down on sleep risk an increase in body weight, and sleeping less than 6-8 hours a night leads to a 12% increase in the risk of dying early, and even short periods e.g. one night of very reduced sleep can lead to resistance to the hormone insulin and potentially […]
Read moreSome sleep disorders are well known – sleep-walking for example. But in very unusual cases people who sleepwalk behave in a highly unusual way, this is a very rare form of the disorder somnambulism when they commite violent acts. In 2008 in the UK a middle aged man with a long history of sleep disorders […]
Read moreI have been sent a query about core and optional sleep as there is some contradiction between what we said in the 1st and 2nd editions of the A2 Complete Companion. Looking around the other A2 textbooks, there seems to be a wide variety of explanations – most of which are not correct. Jim Horne […]
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