UT Southwestern biochemist honored with NIH Director's Pioneer Award
...s of depression. Studies of the genetic link to sleep patterns may help researchers better understand and treat insomnia and other sleep-related disorders, while a clearer picture of the relationship between circadian rhythms and depression might impact drug discovery in the treatment of potentially sig...Veterans with Gulf War syndrome have damage in specific, primitive portion of nervous system
... care of restorative functions of the body. During sleep it's orchestrating that process, which is why we feel refreshed when we wake up," Dr. Haley said. "Its failure to increase at night in ill Gulf War veterans may explain their unrefreshing sleep." The tests were conducted on 40 members of a Na...New treatment for fibromyalgia
...muscle tenderness, often accompanied by headaches, sleep disturbances, and fatigue. While its cause remains a mystery, fibromyalgia has been linked to abnormalities in the brain's neurotransmitters, serotonin and norepinephrine--chemicals key to mood and widely recognized for their role in depression. Not ...Length of sex act in flies dictated by genetics
...humans, they affect a vast array of functions from sleep to body temperature, the nervous and hormonal systems, moods and work productivity. Clock genes also regulate time perception in humans, a process that may be somehow related to measuring time elapsed in the act of mating by flies, Giebultowicz said....Testing the fitness of biological clocks
...onal Affective Disorder, some types of depression, sleep disorders and problems adjusting to changes in work cycles all can occur when an individual's biological clocks act up. Recent studies have even found links between these molecular time-pieces and cancer. Microscopic pacemakers--also known as circadi...Enzyme activation appears key in helping internal clock tell night from day
...n of metabolism and behaviors, which happen during sleep and wakefulness. "Without PKG-II, the clock behaves as if locked in a dynamic loop that encompasses the biochemical state of late night," the researchers wrote. "By potentially interacting with CLOCK (a critical protein of the central clockwork) dur......orking a night shift, and people with more serious sleep disorders, many of which are related to circadian ...ns, we time our major activities with daylight, we sleep during the nighttime, and some of our vital signs follow this pattern. Our blood pressure fluctuates...Coordinating power of circadian rhythms keeps estrus and pregnancy on track
...vels. Many biological processes, including sleep and wakefulness as well as feeding and metabolism, have a 24-hour rhythmicity. The circadian rhythms that underlie these patterns are controlled in the brain by a molecular clock that has a period of approximately 24 hours. By studying the Clock muta...Scientists build on case connecting inflammatory disease and depression
...id. "For example, sickness will cause a person to sleep and eat less. Over the past 25 years, Robert and I have studied why sickness causes those behavioral changes." The work by Dantzer and Kelley is part of a growing trend of laboratory research that is melding the fields of immunology, psychology, neu...Why some neonates need caffeine
...t to stay awake, but to assist in treating a major sleep disorder found in some neonates. Background Apn...ll defined, especially for sleeping neonates whose sleep stages interact with respiratory control. The question of an increase in peripheral chemoreceptor r...Sleepless over Seattle: Migrating songbirds forgo sleep but keep their wits
...nd placed sensors on their brains to monitor their sleep patterns across the seasons. During the times the ... entered more quickly into REM sleep, the stage of sleep typically associated with dreaming in humans. At night, when the birds were active, the brain record...UW study: Migrating birds offer insight into sleep
...iles every year accomplish the feat on very little sleep and what that ability means for humans who are seriously sleep-deprived or face significant sleep problems. The study, published online in the July 13 issue of PloS (Public Library of Science) Biolo...Brain serotonin enzyme finding might explain psychiatric disorders
...d physiological functions including mood, emotion, sleep and appetite, the researchers reported in the July 9, 2004, issue of Science. The finding has major implications for understanding psychiatric disorders and their treatment, the researchers said. Serotonin is a "neurotransmitter," a chemical that one...In the obese, metabolic adaptations post-weight loss lead to regaining of shed pounds
... the weight-reduced state in energy expenditure or sleep metabolic rate when the rats were maintained at a constant, reduced body weight for eight subsequent weeks, suggesting that metabolic efficiency was still higher after a prolonged period of weight maintenance. The researchers did determine that carb...Obesity and hypertension: Two epidemics or one?
...ation between obesity hypertension and obstructive sleep apnea. Obesity is an important risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea but obstructive sleep apnea may be more closely associated with the enlarged abdomen than over...Beware cancer, insomnia and liver disease UH students are taking aim
... treat sleeping/waking disorders, such as advanced sleep phase syndrome, jet lag and insomnia. The results of Figueroa's research show that pupillary light response studies could provide a useful system for high throughput screening of drugs that regulate mammalian circadian rhythms. This would be a mor...'Dissecting sleep' by studying the strange phenomenon of cataplexy
...whom antihistamines in allergy or over-the-counter sleep drugs cause drowsiness. The findings offer new insights both into normal sleep and narcolepsy. To "dissect" the neurological components of sleep, the scientists studied the phenom...VA/UCLA researchers pinpoint role of histamines in waking
...s should aid in the development of drugs to induce sleep and to increase alertness." Siegel is chief of neu...rch team conducted their study using dogs with the sleep disorder narcolepsy, in which sudden collapses of muscle tone, known as cataplexy, occur during waki...Artificial light-dark cycles expose circadian clocks at odds with each other
..., a daily pacemaker that regulates rhythms such as sleep and wakefulness, has thousands of cells called neurons with synchronized circadian activities. But the neurons in the nucleus can be grouped into at least two secondary clocks that can become disconnected from one another when exposed to artificial d......symptomatic students to report respiratory-related sleep difficulties and activity limitations. "The reasons for variation in respiratory conditions within the YK delta are not clear," said Dr. Lewis. "There is a well-established, unified health-care system across the region, and, therefore, we do not thi...