The Nocturnal Brain Quotes

“It seems that when deep sleep is disrupted, different parts of the brain wake up differentially. For people prone to this, the parts of the brain controlling movement and emotion are more likely to wake fully, while the regions of the brain influencing rational thinking and memory remain asleep. During this state, sufferers can do any number of things.”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“predispose to Alzheimer’s.”
― Guy Leschziner, The Secret World Of Sleep: Tales of Nightmares and Neuroscience

“Many questions remain unanswered. Some of these questions are almost inconceivably big, such as the true function (or functions) of dreaming, or whether we really prevent Alzheimer’s disease by improving sleep.”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“Whatever the true nature of this relationship, it highlights the need for psychiatrists and sleep physicians to think holistically, to not simply focus on the problem that they are most familiar with, to approach these patients without the blinkers of having been trained in one particular specialty.”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“Most alarmingly, there is growing evidence that points to hypnotic drugs, particularly benzodiazepines and related drugs, increasing the risk of subsequent dementia.”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“In fact, a widely used drug in nightmares associated with PTSD, prazosin, acts mainly as a blocker of noradrenaline in the brain. Although a recent study suggests prazosin is no more effective than a placebo, I and my colleagues have seen several patients successfully treated with this drug.”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“One peculiarity of REM sleep is that, unlike every other moment of our lives, the mechanisms that regulate our body temperature fail us. While for the rest of the time our body temperature is kept absolutely stable, in REM, it drops. This is actually a highly dangerous state for us to be in. Even small fluctuations in temperature can result in our brains not working properly, or heart rhythm abnormalities. I will occasionally see patients in the intensive-care”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“At 10.30 in the evening, the protocol commences. For the next twenty-four hours, every thirty minutes the patient is allowed to try to go to sleep, with electrodes attached to their scalp. After twenty minutes, if they do not fall asleep, they are asked to get up. But if they do fall asleep, as proven by their brainwaves, after three consecutive minutes of sleep they are woken. By the end of the 24-hour period, they have had forty-eight opportunities to fall asleep. In theory, by the end of the protocol, they are so sleep-deprived that they fall asleep as soon as they are allowed. The conditioned response between bed and sleep has been re-established. This technique sounds like something straight out of Guantanamo Bay, but results from”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep

“Damage to the frontal lobes, whether through tumour, types of dementia or tamping iron, is known to cause personality change, and suggests that the frontal lobes have a fundamental role in our social behaviour and planning.”
― Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep