שינה (0431.3129)

Instructor: William J. Schwartz, M.D.

Nirit and Michael Shaoul Fund Visiting Scholar

Professor of Neurology

University of Massachusetts Medical School

Despite the fact that we spend roughly one-third of our lives asleep, and up to 40% of people complain to physicians about the quality and quantity of their sleep, most students receive little or no formal education on sleep and its dysfunction. For millennia, sleep had been envisioned as a lack of neural activity, the product of an inert passive brain; only in the last several decades has this notion been reversed. We now know that sleep is a tightly regulated state, and physiological systems functioning normally by day can decompensate during the night. The study of sleep is now at the forefront of integrative biology, drawing upon new concepts and data in neurobiology, physiology, psychology, and behavioral ecology. By the end of this course, students should be familiar with the basics of sleep science, aware of current research questions and innovative techniques, and cognizant of the range of sleep disorders and their diagnoses.

Class Activities:

A. Lectures: Biweekly interactive lectures are organized into five modules and designed to cover basic and emerging concepts and approaches in sleep biology and medicine, as presented by the instructor and occasional guest instructors.

B. Primary Literature Discussions: Each module includes a class session devoted to an active student led discussion of a primary scientific article, selected by the instructor. For this purpose, the class is divided into 6 groups of 4 students each and the discussion proceeds using the “jigsaw” approach (https://uminntilt.wordpress.com/?s=jigsaw&submit=Search).

C. Group Presentations: Each group is also assigned a focused topic / question at the frontier of sleep research on which they develop a short paper (less than 10 pages and 15 references) and prepare a shared oral presentation (20 min, 10 min questions and discussion) at the end of the semester.

A. Two take-home, short answer examinations (after Modules III and V): 50%

B. Paper and presentation: 30%

C. Class participation in primary literature discussions: 20%