Two special genes balance your sleep routines

Scimex: Two mutations that influence the amount and type of sleep experienced by mice are reported online in Nature this week. The results are an important step towards understanding the mechanisms that govern slumber. All animals sleep, yet despite its ubiquitous nature, surprisingly little is known about the cellular and molecular signals that underpin this most fundamental behaviour. Hiromasa Funato and colleagues identify two mutations that affect the sleep/wake balance.

Smartphones and tablets 'disrupt children's sleep'

NHS: "Streaming instead of dreaming: Using phones and tablets before bed stops kids from sleeping and can lead to health issues" is the rather poetic headline from the Mail Online. A review of previous data found significant links between media devices like smartphones and tablets, and disrupted sleep in children.Researchers looked at data from more than 125,000 children and found a clear association between using media devices and sleep problems, such as not getting enough sleep at night, reduced sleep quality and daytime sleepiness.

How to Sleep Better: a free online course

Riverside: Trying to aim for eight hours of sleep, but end up with only six? We all know we need to sleep more, but somehow can’t find the time, or don’t know how. Lack of sleep has been linked to obesity and chronic disease. It causes depression, anxiety, and stress, and impairs judgement. Sara Mednick, psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, and a sleep expert, wants to help you sleep better – and is doing so by offering a free online course.

Can we unlearn social biases while we sleep?

TheConversation: Your brain does a lot when you are asleep. It’s when you consolidate memories and integrate the things you’ve learned during the day into your existing knowledge structure. We now have lots of evidence that while you are sleeping, specific memories can be reactivated and thus strengthened. We wondered whether sleep could play a role in undoing implicit social biases. These are the learned negative associations we make through repeat exposure – things like stereotypes about women not being good at science or biases against black people. Research has shown that training can help people learn to counter biases, lessening our knee-jerk prejudices, many of which can operate without our notice.