sleep

We've all been there, late at night and early in the morning, forcing any and every last morsel of knowledge into our weak and exhausted brains. But when the test flops down on our desk, we just stare blankly at the forbidding blue book page. All that knowledge, gone. Either it didn't stick, or it has hid in some inaccessible crevasse deep in the brain.

Memory problems related to sleep deprivation have stymied everyone from college students getting ready for a biochemistry test to Army interrogators probing a tired detainee. Now, scientists have discovered that the memory loss associated with lack of sleep comes down to a single neurological pathway, opening up the possibility of a drug that fixes the memory of a tired brain.

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"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes," quips a character in the science fiction story "Ender's Game." But scientists have now found a mother and daughter whose rare genetic mutation allows them to wake up refreshed on just six hours of sleep -- two hours less than the rest of the family requires.

The 69-year-old mother and 44-year-old daughter usually hit the sack around 10 p.m., and get up around 4 and 4:40 a.m., respectively. Both women have a genetic mutation which affects the regulation of circadian rhythms, or the body's natural clock.

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Of the many obstacles preventing manned travel to Mars, spending over a year weightless ranks as one of the biggest. Extended weightlessness degrades the muscles and bones of astronauts so thoroughly that by the time they get to Mars, they may not have the strength to walk on it.

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I'm still waiting for the technology that finally does away with my need to sleep. But since I do need my nightly dose (I've tried going without, and it's ugly), I'd like to make sure I'm doing it as efficiently as possible. A new device called the Zeo promises to help stamp out bad sleep and wasted time in bed, by bringing deep analysis of sleep patterns, formerly the province of professional sleep laboratories, into the home.

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When your head hits the pillow, your eyes still function. "But they can only sense light versus dark," says physician Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist who founded SoundSleepSolutions.com, a sleep-information Web site. This explains why a bright light or the sunrise often wakes a person up.

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French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote in 1960 that “sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms.” Recent research agrees, finding that some sleepers shriek or even gorge themselves without knowing it. These sleep-disorder sufferers experience neural glitches that mix conscious and unconscious states. Scientists are now searching for the physiological underpinnings in hopes of developing better drug therapies.

Launch our gallery of the most bizarre parasomnias here.

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It’s not necessarily laziness that makes people hit the “snooze” button in the morning. Most likely, your body clock is mismatched with the demands of your life.

Your clock is controlled by the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a part of the brain that controls the body’s biological rhythms. But, says Jean Matheson, a sleep-disorders specialist at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, these preset natural rhythms often don’t align with daily realities—work or school start times cannot be adjusted to fit a person’s sleep schedule.

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Next time you're caught napping in your cube, or some little hideaway in your office, just cite the work of Harvard Medical School scientist Matthew Tucker and his colleagues, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Sleep, then tell your colleague or boss to scurry away.

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Although they may have other talents, few astronauts are much good at sleeping in space. NASA researchers have been studying the problem by hooking up space shuttle crews to all sorts of sleep-monitoring devices. The mystery remains unsolved, but one surprising discovery has been made: There's virtually no snoring in space.

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