Insomnia News and Research

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Insomnia can cause problems during the day, such as excessive sleepiness, fatigue, trouble thinking clearly or staying focused, or feeling depressed or irritable. It is not defined by the number of hours you sleep every night. Although the amount of sleep a person needs varies, most people need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night.

New Research Identifies Brain Cells Linked to Alcohol-Induced Insomnia

Alcohol use disorder, which affects over 10% of Americans, can lead to persistent and serious insomnia.

8 Feb 2025

Base Editing Technique Extends Lifespan in Prion Disease Mouse Model

Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a gene-editing treatment for prion disease that extends lifespan by about 50 percent in a mouse model of the fatal neurodegenerative condition.

15 Jan 2025

New Discovery Sheds Light on How Monoamines Regulate Brain Rhythms

A collaborative effort between Mount Sinai and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has shed valuable light on how monoamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and now histamine help regulate brain physiology and behavior through chemical bonding of these monoamines to histone proteins, the core DNA-packaging proteins of our cells.

9 Jan 2025

Teneurin-3: Protein That Helps for Circadian Rhythm Stability in Mice

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered a protein in mice’s visual systems that seems to be essential for regulating the body’s circadian rhythms by reducing the brain’s sensitivity to light.

29 Dec 2023

Novel Biosensors Uncover Brain Activity

Researchers have employed novel biosensors to uncover neuropeptide activity in the brain, introducing innovative tools for examining the release, function, and regulation of these vital signaling molecules in vivo.

17 Nov 2023

Water Fasting Offers Short-Term Weight Loss, But No Long-Term Benefits

Water fasts -; where people consume nothing but water for several days -; might help you lose weight, but it's unclear how long you'll keep it off, according to research from the University of Illinois Chicago.

30 Jun 2023

Research Deepens Our Understanding of Circadian Rhythm Regulation

New research from a multidisciplinary team helps to illuminate the mechanisms behind circadian rhythms, offering new hope for dealing with jet lag, insomnia and other sleep disorders.

27 Apr 2023

Poor Sleep Combined With High Genetic Susceptibility Results in Greater Asthma Risk

Poor quality sleep may bolster a person's genetic susceptibility to asthma, potentially doubling their risk of being diagnosed with the condition, suggests a large UK Biobank study, published in the open access journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research.

6 Apr 2023

Human sleep architecture varies substantially across seasons, study shows

Whether we're night owls or morning larks, our body clocks are set by the sun. Theoretically, changing day length and light exposure over the course of the year could affect the duration and quality of our sleep.

20 Feb 2023

Tiny microbes belching toxic gas helped cause the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history

Tiny microbes belching toxic gas helped cause -; and prolong -; the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, a new study suggests.

21 Dec 2021

Children with rare genetic disorder experience dramatic improvements in a gene therapy trial

Children with a devastating genetic disorder characterized by severe motor disability and developmental delay have experienced sometimes dramatic improvements in a gene therapy trial launched at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals.

13 Jul 2021

People with diabetes and sleep problems have increased risk of mortality

In a paper published by the Journal of Sleep Research, researchers reveal how they examined data* from half a million middle-aged UK participants asked if they had trouble falling asleep at night or woke up in the middle of the night.

From University of Surrey 9 Jun 2021

Study shows a possible link between pesticide exposure and increased COVID-19 susceptibility

Researchers have discovered a possible connection between increased vulnerability to COVID-19 infection and exposure to organophosphate pesticides.

27 Apr 2021

Tiny population of neurons may play a significant role in depression

A tiny population of neurons known to be important to appetite appear to also have a significant role in depression that results from unpredictable, chronic stress, scientists say.

12 Feb 2021

Daytime napping is partly regulated by a person's genes

How often a person takes daytime naps, if at all, is partly regulated by their genes, according to new research led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and published in Nature Communications.

11 Feb 2021

New simplified approach for producing pharmaceutical substances

Tetrahydroisoquinolines (THIQ) are organic compounds, whose structure includes a benzene ring merged with a nitrogen-containing cycle.

11 Feb 2021

Study examines effect of wind turbine noise on sleep, wellbeing of nearby residents

As wind power generation becomes more important, experts in Australia are examining whether wind 'farm' turbine background noise in the environmental can affect sleep and wellbeing of nearby residents.

4 Dec 2020

Climate change-driven wildfires cause devastating health impacts

Immediate actions are needed to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change that helps fuel wildfires, a Monash University study says.

14 Oct 2020

Study offers explanation to why people respond differently to the same drug

Scientists at Scripps Research have comprehensively mapped how a key class of proteins within cells regulates signals coming in from cell surface receptors.

5 Oct 2020

Neuronal connections that trigger insomnia linked to stress-induced changes in the immune system

Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Stanford University have pinpointed the circuit in the brain that is responsible for sleepless nights in times of stress--and it turns out that circuit does more than make you toss and turn.

10 Sep 2020