New research suggests regular afternoon naps (longer than five minutes but shorter than two hours) can be linked with better cognitive health in the elderly.
Sleep science: The latest research on rest
How long should an afternoon nap last? What influence does gut bacteria have on the quality of your sleep? And how can REM sleep affect your appetite the next day? These are just a few of the extraordinary recent discoveries in the science of sleep.
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New clues suggest metabolites produced by bacteria in the gut could be influencing how much rest we get each night.
New research analyzing data from dozens of sleep studies has identified a dramatic change to the nature and purpose of sleep in babies, occurring around the age of two.
Incorporating several measures of sleep quality, the research suggests improving sleep behavior is an important intervention for both clinicians and patients looking to reduce risk of heart failure.
Although the finding is only correlational, the researchers suggest it is safest to keep your siestas to less than one hour.
The researchers witnessed neuronal firing patterns in humans during sleep that suggest we replay our waking experiences as we rest.
"Our study not only establishes a causal connection between sleep and anxiety, but it identifies the kind of deep NREM sleep we need to calm the overanxious brain."
Disrupting neural activity in a specific brain region during REM sleep resulted in changes to the eating patterns of mice for several days.