Sleep Science Podcast
We spend a third of our lives sleeping, and this podcast is all about understanding sleep. We know a lot about what the brain does in sleep, but we are just starting to understand why it does some of these things, and even more excitingly, how we can take full advantage of sleep and also manipulate it for our own ends. In each episode, neuroscientist Penny Lewis interviews a different sleep researcher, talking about a various aspect of sleep science. Topics will include sleep physiology and medicine, circadian rhythm, how sleep impacts on our memories and creativity, Sleep Engineering for enhanced health and cognition, and the most recent technologies to promote sleep.©SleepSciencePodcast 2021. These materials may be downloaded for personal use only. They may not be shared, distributed or reproduced in any form or for any reason without express permission
Episodes
19 episodes
S2E9 - End of season Q&A Session
For our end of season special, we have the rest of the NaPS lab in to answer a number of exciting sleep-related questions from our listeners. These touch on a range of different subjects from sleeps involvement in weight gain to alcohol's effec...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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28:05
S2E8 - Chiara Cirelli - Synaptic Homeostasis in Sleep
In this episode, we talk with Professor Chiara Cirelli from the department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin. We begin by hearing about how she first got interested in sleep research, and particularly about her time as a medi...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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55:28
S2E7 - Reto Huber - Local Sleep, Sleep Homeostasis, & Brain Plasticity
In this episode, we interviewed Professor Reto Huber, who leads a research group at the University Children’s Hospital, Zurich. Reto’s interests encompass sleep disorders, development, synaptic ...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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53:35
S2E5 - Manuel Schabus & Kerstin Hoedlmoser - How babies sleep and what this means for their cognitive function
In this episode we talk to Professor Manuel Schabus and Professor Kerstin Hoedlmoser from the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Salzburg. In this episode, we discuss their work on the development of...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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44:43
S2E6 Wenbiao Gan - The role of sleep in synapse formation and elimination
In this episode, we talk to Professor Wenbiao Gan from the Neuroscience and Physiology and Skirball Institute at New York University School of Medicine.Professor Gan tells us about how he started to become interested in studying sleep a...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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42:04
S2E4 Colin Espie – What is insomnia and how can we treat it?
In this episode, we interviewed Colin Espie, one of the world’s leading authorities on sleep and insomnia. Colin is Professor in Sleep Medicine at the University of Oxford, and Clinical Director of the Experimental & Clinical Sleep Me...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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50:06
S2E3 - Tore Nielsen & Mark Blagrove - Lucid Dreaming & the 'Dream-lag' effect
In this episode, we talk to Professor Tore Nielsen from the University of Montreal and Professor Mark Blagrove from Swansea University.In part 2 of this two part episode, we carry on our discussion about nightmares and talk about ...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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44:58
S2E1:Tristan Bekinschtein - The Consciousness Boundary
In this episode, we talk to Dr Tristan Bekinschtein from the Cambridge Consciousness and Cognition Lab and discuss his research looking into the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness. We talk about his work in th...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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54:58
S2E2: Tore Nielsen & Mark Blagrove - Part 1 - What we dream and why we need to
In this episode, we talk to Professor Tore Nielsen from the University of Montreal and Professor Mark Blagrove from Swansea University. In part 1 of this two part episode, we talk about how both our guests became interested in the...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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45:59
Episode 10: Christmas Q&A session
Today's episode is a little bit different. We're marking the end of our first season by roping in the rest of the NaPS lab to answer listeners' sleep-related questions. Thanks to everyone who sent questions in!List of questions:<...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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23:29
Episode 9: Michelle Carr and Karen Konkoly - What is lucid dreaming and how can it help us?
Have you ever wished you could control your dreams? In this episode we learn about new approaches letting people do exactly that. We also delve into important benefits lucid dreaming could have, such as helping reduce nightmares or helping proc...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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40:39
Episode 8: Daniel Bendor: Memory Replay and Consolidation in Rodents
In this episode, we talk to Dr Daniel Bendor from University College London. Daniel's work focuses on rodent studies of place cells in the hippocampus. We discuss the phenomena of memory replay in which place cell activity mimics&n...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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1:06:14
Episode 7: Björn Rasch -Targeted Memory Reactivation
In this episode, we talk to Professor Björn Rasch about the pioneering of a process called Targeted Memory Reactivation (TMR). TMR is a tool which can be used to selectively consolidate learnt material during sleep by pairing it with se...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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1:00:39
Episode 6: Dan Margoliash & Tim Brawn: How sleep helps birds to learn their songs
In this episode we take a neuroethological approach to sleep, and discover why songbirds are such a good model system for studying sleep's role in learning. These include advantages like songbirds' sleep-wake patterns and sleep architecture bei...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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1:18:30
Episode 5: Anat Arzi & Thomas Andrillon - Learning in your sleep
We humans have long wondered if it is possible to learn while we sleep but, experimental findings on this have often been disappointing. You will now be happy to learn that the tide has turned in this respect, since we now have firm proof that ...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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1:00:32
Episode 4: Vlad Vyazovskiy - Local sleep, circadian rhythms and torpor
In this episode we examine how sleep differs between species to get some clues about what sleep actually is as a phenomenon. How have marine animals solved the problem of sleeping when they regularly need to come up for air? And how d...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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46:54
Episode 3: Gina Poe - How sleep restructures our memories and emotions
In this episode we ask Gina Poe, a sleep scientist from UCLA, about her seminal work on both REM and non-REM sleep. We talk about the role of memory replay in REM, how to measure such replay in rats, as well as the ways in which REM impacts upo...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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43:33
Episode 2: Sasha Handley - A history of sleep in Early Modern England
In this episode we look back on the beliefs and practices people had around sleep in the 16th-18th centuries. We learn about why sleep was thought so important for health, how various habits and superstitions arose around sleep often rooted in ...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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33:46
Episode 1: Bob Stickgold - What do sleep and dreams do for our minds and our memories?
In this episode, we speak with Professor Bob Stickgold, one of the most prominent researchers in the field of sleep science. Bob tells us about the early days of sleep research and how he and other scientists struggled to convince the world tha...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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47:54