Sleep remains one of the most mysterious yet ubiquitous animal behaviors. We review current perspectives on the neural systems that regulate sleep/wake states in mammals and the circadian mechanisms that control their timing. We also outline key models for the regulation of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep, how mutual inhibition between specific pathways gives rise to these dist...

Surface evoked potentials (SEPs) during auditory clicks and whisker twitches are usually larger during quiet sleep (QS) over waking and REM sleep. However, SEP amplitudes from single trials fluctuate periodically between high and low values regardless of sleep-wake cycle. To test the hypothesis that state-independent fluctuations represent local functional sleep-like states of individual cortic...

Narcolepsy is caused by a lack of orexin (hypocretin), but the physiologic process that underlies the sleepiness of narcolepsy is unknown. Using orexin knock-out (KO) mice as a model of narcolepsy, we critically tested the three leading hypotheses: poor circadian control of sleep and wakefulness, inadequate activation of arousal regions, or abnormal sleep homeostasis. Compared with wild-type (W...

AIMS This study examined the relationship between early organization of sleep-wake states and developmental outcome at 6-month-old premature infants. STUDY DESIGN This was a prospective randomized study that evaluated the sleep-wake states of healthy premature infants in the nursery environment for two successive 72-h periods, at 32 and 36 weeks gestational age. SUBJECTS Thirty-four healthy...

Increased attention to the prevalence of excessive sleepiness has led to a clear need to treat this symptom, thus reinforcing the need for a greater understanding of the neurobiology of sleep and wakefulness. Although the physiological mechanisms of sleep and wakefulness are highly interrelated, recent research reveals that there are distinct differences in the active brain processing and the s...

Studies on human physical performance in extreme environments have effectively approached the investigation of adaptation mechanisms and their physiological limits. As scientific interest in the interplay between physiological and psychological aspects of performance is growing, we aimed to investigate cardiac autonomic control, by means of heart rate variability, and psychological correlates, ...

the flow characteristics around an elliptic cylinder with an axis ratio of ar=2 located near a flat plate were investigated experimentally. the elliptic cylinder was located on the inside and outside a turbulent boundary layer region whose thickness (δ) is 0.38b. the reynolds numbers based on the height of the cylinder cross-section were 15000 and 30000. measurements of mean velocity and turbul...