14 DAY TRIAL // Since the early days of science, people have attempted to understand precisely what happens during sleep, and why we need to sleep at all. While the immediate answer would seem to be “to get some rest,” this doesn't hold when looking at the issue from a biological point of view. True enough, over the years, scientists have determined that sleeping helps clear our mind, get rid of useless data, and consolidate important moments and experiences, but some of the most difficult questions related to the subject still remain unanswered. Now, researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) take a new approach to answering them, ScienceDaily reports.
Rather than conducting sleep studies, direct observations on sleeping test subjects, or brain scans, they are attempting to create a mathematical model that would be able to provide other investigators with accurate predictions of how changing certain external factors would influence sleep quality. Environmental, medical, or physical changes around an individual will affect his or her sleep, many experts already know. But precisely how this happens and what the full extent of the effects is are two issues still tremendously difficult to determine. The new model is meant to be an easy-to-use tool, and would allow researchers to isolate and account for a large number of variables in their future work.
The computer simulation is being developed by RPI mathematics professor Mark Holmes, who is working together with Lisa Rogers, one of his graduate students. They also plan to include data that would give investigators more indications of how the dynamics of the sleep-wake cycle function, and what the effects of disturbances in this cycle may be. “We wanted to create a very interdisciplinary tool to understand the sleep-wake cycle. We based the model on the best and most recent biological findings developed by neurobiologists on the various phases of the cycle and built our mathematical equations from that foundation. This has created a model that is both mathematically and biologically accurate and useful to a variety of scientists,” Holmes reveals.
“This is also an important example of how applied mathematics can be used to solve real issues in science and medicine,” Holmes adds. “We have developed a model that can serve other researchers as a benchmark of the ideal, healthy sleep-wake cycle. Scientists will be able to take this ideal model and predict how different disturbances such as caffeine or jet lag will impact that ideal cycle. This is a very non-invasive way to study the brain and sleep that will provide important clues on how to overcome these disturbances and allow patients to have better and more undisturbed sleep,” he concludes.