Nature & Environment
Fat-Tailed Dwarf Lemurs Show Secrets of Sleep through Hibernation Patterns
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Sep 05, 2013 03:38 PM EDT
Researchers from a team at Duke University have found out a little secret about human's sleep patterns.
"If we spend nearly a third of our lives doing it, it must have some specific purpose," said lead author Andrew Krystal, a sleep researcher at Duke, via a press release. And thanks to this recent study, she's right.
Their findings regarding the fat-tailed dwarf lemur support the theory that not only does sleep help replenish cells, but it regulates body temperature and metabolism.
Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs, squirrel-sized primates native to the African island of Madagascar, are the closest genetic relative to humans that are known to hibernate, according to background information from the study. As they hibernate, the regulation of their body temperature begins to slow down.
In fact, they can actually drop their heart rate from 120 beats per minute to 6. And instead of maintaining a normal body temperatures as most mammals do, their bodies heat up or cool down depending on the current temperature.
While a change in body temperature could be fatalistic for most mammals, it's not quite the case with these guys. In fact, hibernation helps them conserve energy during long dry winters.
To watch the creatures during their thermoregulation process that doesn't allow deep sleep, researchers attached electrodes to the animals' scalps and returned them to their natural habitat for monitoring. Oxygen intake was also measured.
Results showed that the lemurs in Torpor went for days without periods of deep sleep via the scans of low-amplitude brain activity.
The study concludes the following, via the release: "Hibernating lemurs did show periods of brain activity consistent with the phase of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep -- when most dreaming is believed to occur -- but only when winter temperatures rose above 25 degrees Celsius."
Researchers hope with further studies that they could be able to induce a hibernation-like state in humans.
What do you think?
More information regarding the study can be found via the journal PLUS One.
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NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone
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First Posted: Sep 05, 2013 03:38 PM EDT
Researchers from a team at Duke University have found out a little secret about human's sleep patterns.
"If we spend nearly a third of our lives doing it, it must have some specific purpose," said lead author Andrew Krystal, a sleep researcher at Duke, via a press release. And thanks to this recent study, she's right.
Their findings regarding the fat-tailed dwarf lemur support the theory that not only does sleep help replenish cells, but it regulates body temperature and metabolism.
Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs, squirrel-sized primates native to the African island of Madagascar, are the closest genetic relative to humans that are known to hibernate, according to background information from the study. As they hibernate, the regulation of their body temperature begins to slow down.
In fact, they can actually drop their heart rate from 120 beats per minute to 6. And instead of maintaining a normal body temperatures as most mammals do, their bodies heat up or cool down depending on the current temperature.
While a change in body temperature could be fatalistic for most mammals, it's not quite the case with these guys. In fact, hibernation helps them conserve energy during long dry winters.
To watch the creatures during their thermoregulation process that doesn't allow deep sleep, researchers attached electrodes to the animals' scalps and returned them to their natural habitat for monitoring. Oxygen intake was also measured.
Results showed that the lemurs in Torpor went for days without periods of deep sleep via the scans of low-amplitude brain activity.
The study concludes the following, via the release: "Hibernating lemurs did show periods of brain activity consistent with the phase of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep -- when most dreaming is believed to occur -- but only when winter temperatures rose above 25 degrees Celsius."
Researchers hope with further studies that they could be able to induce a hibernation-like state in humans.
What do you think?
More information regarding the study can be found via the journal PLUS One.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone