In the good sleepers, the parts of the brain related to inciting emotions (the amygdala) and those linked to memory retrospection (the hippocampus) quickly ramped down in their levels of activity as they transitioned toward sleep, as did basic alertness regions in the brain stem. This was not the case for the insomnia patients. Their emotion-generating regions and memory-recollection centers all remained active. This was similarly true of the basic vigilance centers in the brain stem that stubbornly continued their wakeful watch. All the while the thalamus—the sensory gate of the brain that
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