Artist Lee Hadwin has a unique talent – he can only produce his artwork in his sleep.

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VIDEO: The man who draws in his sleep

Dietary supplements promoted as reducing stress and insomnia are easy to buy, but some doctors warn of their harmful effects.

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Dessert, Laid-Back and Legal

The Israeli military has set up checkpoints and made arrests Saturday in a massive search for suspects, believed to be Palestinian militants, accused of knifing an Israeli family of five to death in their sleep in a West Bank settlement. The attack…

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Israel Hunts Attackers Who Killed Five Settlers

Sharing a mattress with pets has its risks: germs, crowding and rivalries. It also has its rewards: unconditional love.

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Warm Nights, Cold Noses

Veteran actor Len Lesser died in his sleep Wednesday morning in Burbank, California, of complications from pneumonia. He was 88.

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Seinfeld’s ‘Uncle Leo’ dead at 88

Memoirs about language-learning reflect the fear of a world flattened by the new lingua franca.

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Essay: Dreaming in English

Memoirs about language-learning reflect the fear of a world flattened by the new lingua franca.

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Essay: Dreaming in English

Perhaps the idea of revenge came from his sleep deprivation.

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Md. father uses robocall to get revenge on school officials

For many new House members, joining the unofficial Couch Caucus is a way to save money and a way to show that they are fiscally conservative.

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For House Members Looking to Save Money, a Day at the Office Never Ends

There are thousands of places in Manhattan to spend the night, but for two men from Florida, the best rest is found in an elm tree.

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Finding a Bed Among Central Park’s Trees

A woman shot her husband in his sleep at their Flintshire home before taking an overdose herself, an inquest hears.

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Compact travel gear to keep warm and comfy on the open road or in the sky Whether travel plans include a redeye in economy or a night under the open sky, trying to get some sleep outside of the typical sheets-mattress combo often means a stressful following day. Rather than desperately buy the overpriced, bulky versions at the airport, I recently checked out Design Salt’s Cocoon collection of travel sheets, pillows and blankets. The lightweight “sleep gear for adventurers” squashes into small packs and unfolds into any number of sleep systems designed around specific needs. With 11 fabric choices , choosing a a climate-appropriate cloth—from all-purpose, fast-drying silk to SeaCell for humidity—is simple. I took the inflatable u-shaped pillow on a cross-country flight recently and was happy to deplane kink-free. For those who prefer the window, the rectangular pillows work perfectly as window-fillers and similarly pack into a compact size. The Travel Sheets are great on the go as a lightweight sleeping bag or liner (for those who like to sleep in the nude). Perfect for long flights, the sleep sack comes in various weights for adding an extra layer of warmth inside a sleeping bag and they make a version specifically-designed for mummy bags. Modern travel means packing light, and the Cocoon gear fits that requirement without sacrificing quality construction and fabrics.

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Cocoon Travel Gear

This article titled “Scientists find key to a good night’s sleep” was written by Alok Jha, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 9th August 2010 16.17 UTC

How is it that some people can sleep through sirens, blaring music or even an earthquake, while others will wake up if anyone so much as tiptoes into the room?

Scientists may now have an answer to this riddle, thanks to a study that cracks open one of the long-standing mysteries of getting a good night’s sleep. Sound sleepers, they found, have specific patterns of activity in the brain that block out distracting signals during their slumber.

A gateway in the brain, called the thalamus, takes a role in the onward direction of most types of sensory information coming in to the brain. The researchers believe that brief bursts of electrical activity in this area, called “sleep spindles”, somehow block external sounds form reaching any parts of the brain that might wake a person up. In short, light sleepers do not produce as many sleep spindles as heavy sleepers.

“We found that by measuring brain waves during sleep, we could learn a lot about how well a person’s brain can block the negative effects of sounds. The more sleep spindles your brain produces, the more likely you’ll stay asleep, even when confronted with noise,” said Jeffrey Ellenbogen of Harvard Medical School in Boston. His results are published today in Current Biology.

“The thalamus is likely preventing sensory information from getting to areas of the brain that perceive and react to sound. And our data provide evidence that the sleep spindle is a marker of this blockade. More spindles means more stable sleep, even when confronted with noise,” he said.

Light sleepers may benefit from boosting the number of spindles in their brains, though the researchers acknowledge they are still unclear how the boost could be achieved. Behavioural techniques, drugs, or an electronic device could provide a solution.

Ellenbogen’s team recorded the brain-wave patterns of 12 volunteers who had to try to sleep in noisy laboratories over three nights. For the first night, they were undisturbed but, during the second and third nights, they were subjected to telephones ringing, people talking, and other mechanical sounds normally heard in hospitals.

“The effect of sleep spindles was so pronounced that we could see it even after just a single night,” Ellenbogen said.

The scientists hope that understanding brain scans during sleep will enable researchers to develop tools to keep us asleep when we want to sleep and to wake us up only when it is time. “Our goal is to find brain-based solutions that integrate a sleeping person into their modern environment, such that sleep is maintained even in the face of noises,” Ellenbogen said. “This finding gets us one important step closer to realising that goal.”

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