Pop Awake At Night? Researchers Blame ‘Sleep Switch’ In Your Aging Brain

WBUR reports Pop Awake At Night? Researchers Blame ‘Sleep Switch’ In Your Aging Brain "Researchers have just reported in the journal Brain that they’ve found a group of neurons — in the aforementioned nucleus – that function as a kind of ‘sleep switch,’ and whose degeneration over the years is looking very much like the cause of age-related sleep loss. It’s also looking pivotal in the insomnia that often causes nocturnal wandering in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

‘This is the first time that anyone has ever been able to show in humans that there is a distinct group of nerve cells in the brain that’s critical for allowing you to sleep,’ said the paper’s senior author, Dr. Clifford Saper, chair of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School."