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SUMMARY:A Quantitative\, Theoretical Framework for Understanding Mammalian
  Sleep - Wave Ngampruetikorn
DTSTART:20110304T160000Z
DTEND:20110304T163000Z
UID:TALK29714@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Daniel Cole
DESCRIPTION:"V. Savage and G. West\, PNAS 104:1051 (2007) ":http://www.pna
 s.org/content/104/3/1051.abstract\n\nSleep is one of the most noticeable a
 nd widespread phenomena occurring in multicellular animals. Nevertheless\,
  no consensus for a theory of its origins has emerged. In particular\, no 
 explicit\, quantitative theory exists that elucidates or distinguishes bet
 ween the myriad hypotheses proposed for sleep. Here\, we develop a general
 \, quantitative theory for mammalian sleep that relates many of its fundam
 ental parameters to metabolic rate and body size. Several mechanisms sugge
 sted for the function of sleep can be placed in this framework\, e.g.\, ce
 llular repair of damage caused by metabolic processes as well as cortical 
 reorganization to process sensory input. Our theory leads to predictions f
 or sleep time\, sleep cycle time\, and rapid eye movement time as function
 s of body and brain mass\, and it explains\, for example\, why mice sleep 
 ~14 hours per day relative to the 3.5 hours per day that elephants sleep. 
 Data for 96 species of mammals\, spanning six orders of magnitude in body 
 size\, are consistent with these predictions and provide strong evidence t
 hat time scales for sleep are set by the brain's\, not the whole-body\, me
 tabolic rate.
LOCATION:TCM Seminar Room\, Cavendish Laboratory
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