Dormivigilia

This is my fourth year as a blogger.  And I still love it. While some of my friends’ blogging enthusiasms have declined (yes, Montegraphia..this means YOU!!!), I have continued to increase the frequency of posting with each new year. The year began with some exciting, personal news. Montegraphia and I got engaged on New Year’s Eve/Day [...]

Per usual, I post some of the most fascinating science, current health news, and personal events from the year of 2011. Scientifically, I highlighted novel methods and materials, including optogenetics and fMRIs in rodents, and recent progress in drug addiction and circadian rhythms research, for the most part. Professionally, I had the opportunity to attend [...]

It would be awesome recapture my blogs posts of the decade, but quite honestly, I didn’t even have access to the Internet at the beginning of the decade; I was in ninth grade and my family had a Windows 95 operating system on which I typed all my homework assignments and college essays throughout high [...]

Don Steinberg, a freelance sports writer from Philadelphia, has created an educational fantasy football league. Did I say educational? For people like my brother who can’t quite remember important facts in American/European history and/or science, he certainly knows more about sports scores and statistics than anyone can fathom (His sister, on the other hand, knows [...]

This was my first year as a “neuroblogger” (per Society for Neuroscience) or even a blogger for that matter. Though I have not perfected the practice of proofreading, and hence, have to re-post several times, I do seem to have a steady audience (so I think). Below are the bests of 2009, month by month. [...]

This post is not about the tragic plane crash over the Hudson river, killing 9 people. This post is about the efficacious of crash pads; small-scale dormitories supplanted in metropolis and designed to provide trans-America pilots with some “decent” shut-eye. I applaud the Federal Aviation Administration for realizing that sleep is vital and incredibly dangerous [...]

According to a recent poll published by the National Sleep Foundation, one third of Americans take naps. This is enlightening, considering most sleep reports focus on work-related and chronic sleep deprivation. A 20 min nap not only combats sleepiness, particularly for drowsy drivers, but also improves memory, performance, and emotional valence, especially if the nap [...]

An airport, of course. But which airports are the least sleep-friendly?  Three of the airports on the list (JFK, Chicago O’Hare, and Heathrow, I have slept overnight in the past). Of these, JFK was the most horrendous; I slept on a plastic sofa at a sushi bar in the food court. After attempting to fall asleep [...]

A few months ago, I read the Bible (of sleep and circadian research): Nathaniel Kleitman’s Sleep and Wakefulness. Though I was most intrigued by the vast differences in methodologies pre and post the 20th century, Kleitman’s commentary on “Kohlschuetter’s curve” was similarly salient: Kohlschuetter decided that the curve depicting thresholds of arousal from acoustical stimuli throughout the progression of NREM sleep should [...]