This paper outlines the development of a health communications campaign targeted toward college students at the University of Texas at Austin, regarding the issue of sleep deprivation. Existing literature, informal formative research, and concept testing are applied to two main health communication theories: the Health Belief Model, and the Transtheoretical Model. The iterative process of the campaign development is outlined, and key deliverables included. / text

Sleep Paralysis was written to be performed by a chamber orchestra of 17 performers total. The piece runs between 11 and 12 minutes and has a distinct programmatic approach. This piece attempts to convey the emotions and feelings one might experience when he or she is stricken with sleep paralysis—a condition where one wakes up during sleep but cannot move. Thus, this piece is set up as a dream gone badly. Harmonic and rhythmic tension increase throughout the piece until it reaches a moment of “paralysis” where the harmonies are static and melodies and themes appear in a dream-like fashion. Eventually, the ever-mounting tension resolves to free the listener of the paralysis; however, one should not assume that the paralysis is gone forever. / text

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Sleep is a behavioral condition fraught with mystery. Its definition—either a suite of diagnostic behavioral characters, electrophysiological signatures, or a combination of the two—varies in the literature and lacks an over-arching purpose. In spite of these vagaries, sleep supports a large and dynamic research community studying the mechanisms, ontogeny, possible functions and, to a lesser degree, its evolution across vertebrates and in a small number of invertebrates. Sleep has been described and examined in many social organisms, including eusocial honey bees (Apis mellifera), but the role of sleep within societies has rarely been addressed in non-human animals. I investigated uniquely social aspects of sleep within honey bees by asking basic questions relating to who sleeps, when and where individuals sleep, the flexibility of sleep, and why sleep is important within colonies of insects. First, I investigated caste-dependent sleep patterns in honey bees and report that younger workers (cell cleaners and nurse bees) exhibit arrhythmic and brief sleep bouts primarily while inside comb cells, while older workers (food storers and foragers) display periodic, longer sleep bouts primarily outside of cells. Next, I mapped sleep using remote thermal sensing across colonies of honey bees after introducing newly eclosed workers to experimental colonies and following them through periods of their adult lives. Bees tended to sleep outside of cells closer to the edge of the hive than when asleep inside cells or awake, and exhibited caste-dependent thermal patterns, both temporally and spatially. Wishing to test the flexibility of sleep, I trained foragers to a feeder and made a food resource available early in the morning or late in the afternoon. The bees were forced to shift their foraging schedule, which consequently also shifted their sleep schedule. Finally, I sleep-deprived a subset of foragers within a colony by employing a magnetic “insominator” to test for changes in their signaling precision. Sleep-deprived foragers exhibited reduced precision when encoding direction information to food sources in their waggle dances. These studies reveal patterns and one possible purpose of sleep in the context of a society. / text

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The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, provided a unique, though unfortunate, opportunity to study Americans' sleep reactions to a traumatic event. Questionnaires were distributed electronically to a web-based panel whose demographic distribution closely matched current U.S. census counts. Prior to 9/11/01, participants reported whether they had ever been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, or insomnia. Two weeks following the terrorist attacks, they completed an acute stress questionnaire (SASRQ) which included questions about 9/11-related difficulty falling or staying asleep and nightmares. They later completed a posttraumatic stress symptom questionnaire at two time points: 2 months and 6 months post-9/11. This instrument, the IES-R, included questions about 9/11-related difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, and dreams. A total of 782 adults (50.4% male; mean age = 49.6 years) responded.Two weeks following the terrorist attacks, 23% of the sample reported having 9/11-related difficulty falling or staying asleep; 9% reported 9/11-related nightmares. Two months following the attacks, 27% reported having at least some difficulty falling asleep related to 9/11, 33% reported having difficulty staying asleep, and 17% reported having 9/11-related dreams. When assessed again at 6 months post-9/11, levels of these three sleep issues dropped significantly to 14%, 15%, and 8%, respectively. Females reported higher levels of 9/11-related sleep difficulties than males both at 2 weeks and 2 months after the attacks. By 6 months post-9/11, this sex difference had all but disappeared. Older respondents were slightly less likely than younger ones to report nightmares 2 weeks post-9/11 and dreams 2 months post-9/11. Those with pre-9/11 diagnoses of anxiety, depression, and insomnia generally had higher rates of 9/11-related sleep difficulties at all time points assessed.When tested with a hierarchical regression model, difficulty falling or staying asleep at 2 weeks post-9/11 significantly predicted posttraumatic stress symptoms experienced 6 months (but not 2 months) following the attacks. This was true even when taking into account the contribution of pre-existing psychiatric diagnoses and non-sleep-related acute stress symptoms. These findings raise the possibility that the experience of disturbed sleep soon after a trauma directly contributes to the eventual development and exacerbation of posttraumatic stress symptoms.

Sleep matters for adolescents. It matters for physical and mental health, for success in the classroom and in extracurricular activities, for safety while driving and for protection against potential future psychological problems and substance abuse. Although the recommended nightly amount of sleep for adolescents is over nine hours, many factors interact to preclude teens from getting the sleep they need. This study uses a biocultural, multi-method approach to examine how biological, cultural, and environmental factors interact to affect adolescent sleep behavior in a cohort of 50 high school freshmen in the United States. High school is a place where adolescents learn social and academic skills that will carry them into adult life, but it also provides a space where they are socialized into "how to sleep." By exploring sleep and related behaviors, including ways to cope with inadequate sleep, in a group of teens who were 14 or 15 years old and evenly divided between White and Hispanic and male and female participants, this research explores how sleep is embedded within webs of individual, household-level, school-specific and societal factors. Beyond examining how advice about sleep and teens' experience of sleep behavior is internalized and embodied by adolescents, special attention is paid to the relationships between personal technology use and sleep, and also to the relationships among sleep and food and caffeine intake.

Background: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been associated with atrial enlargement in response to high arterial and pulmonary pressures and increased sympathetic tone. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is the gold standard treatment for OSA; its impact on atrial electrical remodeling has not been investigated however. Signal-averaged p-wave (SAPW) is a non-invasive quantitative method to determine p-wave duration, an accepted marker for atrial electrical remodeling. The objective was to determine whether CPAP induces reverse atrial electrical remodeling in patients with severe OSA. Methods: Prospective study in consecutive patients attending the Sleep Clinic at Kingston General Hospital. All patients underwent full polysomnography. OSA-negative and severe OSA were defined as apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) < 5 events/hour and AHI ≥ 30 events/hour, respectively. In severe OSA patients, SAPW was determined pre- and post-intervention with CPAP for 4 - 6 weeks. In OSA-negative controls, SAPW was recorded at baseline and 4 - 6 weeks thereafter without any intervention. Results: A total of 19 severe OSA patients and 10 controls were included in the analysis. Mean AHI and minimum O2 saturation were 41.4 ± 10.1 events/hour and 80.5 ± 6.5% in severe OSA patients and 2.8 ± 1.2 events/hour and 91.4 ± 2.1% in controls. Baseline BMI was different between severe OSA patients and controls (34.3 ± 5.4 vs 26.6 ± 4.6 kg/m2; p < 0.001). At baseline, severe OSA patients had a greater SAPW duration than controls (131.9 ± 10.4 vs 122.8 ± 10.5 ms; p = 0.02). After CPAP intervention, there was a significant reduction of SAPW duration in severe OSA (131.9 ± 10.4 to 126.2 ± 8.8 ms; p < 0.001). In controls, SAPW duration did not change within 4 - 6 weeks. Conclusion: CPAP induced reverse atrial electrical remodeling in patients with severe OSA as represented by a significant reduction in SAPW duration. / Thesis (Master, Physiology) -- Queen's University, 2011-07-29 12:53:09.134

Sleep problems are common in children with ASD. Despite this, evidence for interventions, particularly alternative approaches such as weighted blankets is limited. Aims. The aims of the study were to examine weighted blankets for: (1) their effectiveness as an intervention for sleep problems; (2) their impact on sleep state organisation; (3) their impact on night-time movement; (4) the sensory characteristics of children responding to the intervention; (5) parent’s perceptions of the intervention; (6) behavioural interventions as a second intervention if required. Method. Using a non-concurrent multiple baseline design, five children with autism aged between 7 to 13 years received a weighted blanket intervention with the option of a secondary behavioural intervention. Results. One participant rejected the weighted blanket outright. Four participants showed no substantial improvements in sleep problems or changes in sleep state organisational. Despite this, parents of four participants still perceived the weighted blanket to be moderately effective. The sensory profiles of participants were not related to their response to the intervention. Participants’ night-time movements were not found to be suppressed by the weighted blankets. Two participants went on to receive a behavioural intervention, one was successful and the other withdrew from the study before implementing the strategies. One other participant’s sleep difficulties resolved over time without further intervention. Implications. The current study neither supported weighted blankets as an intervention for sleep problems in children with autism nor supported contentions of its effectiveness for children with sensation seeking behaviours.