Articles in The New Yorker about sleep

There is an interesting series of articles being published about sleep in The New Yorker this week by Maria Konnikova.

Part 1: Why Can't We Sleep

Part 2: The Work We Do While We Sleep

The articles touch on many areas of sleep research.

Here's a snippet:

... There’s sleep apnea, when your breathing pauses as you sleep, often for a few seconds but sometimes for a few minutes, before your body briefly jolts awake to restart the process. (Often, the jolt never makes it into conscious memory.) In trials, the disorder has been associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease and has been shown to lead to cognitive impairment ...

For sleep scientists, all of these unpleasant disorders offer tantalizing lines of inquiry. The link between many of them and neurodegenerative disease, or other forms of cognitive impairment, suggests that sleep could be required for cognitive upkeep and function. Their link with heart disease suggests that sleep might serve to relieve vascular stress. The fact that insomnia is associated with depression suggests that sleep might help us deal with emotionally stressful or otherwise disruptive events.