System that controls sleep may be same for most mammals
Friday, June 25, 2010 - 05:14
in Biology & Nature
In a novel mathematical model that reproduces sleep patterns for multiple species, an international team of researchers has demonstrated that the neural circuitry that controls the sleep/wake cycle in humans may also control the sleep patterns of 17 different mammalian species. These findings, reported by researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), the University of Sydney, and the Centre for Integrated Research and Understanding of Sleep (Camperdown, Australia), suggest that fundamental physiological mechanisms are at work across diverse species, even though sleep patterns vary drastically. This research published June 24th in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology...