Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Relates contemporary knowledge from psychology to current social problems. Provides relevant information from studies pertaining to problems such as attitude development, prejudice, race relations, addiction, behavior technology, and family pathology. Course can be repeated for credit. See Psychology department website for course description. Students may not take this course for further credit if similar topics are covered. Breadth-Social Sciences.

COURSE DETAILS:

Sleep is a behaviour that occupies a third of our lives and is essential for our health and well-being, but we do not yet understand why. Some experts believe that our 24-h society has produced a chronically sleep deprived population, and that this underlies a host of behavioural and medical problems, while others argue that sleep is dispensable in some animals and can be reduced without harm in people. How much sleep do we really need, and what happens if we get too little or too much (if there is such a thing)? To answer these questions, we need to know what biological and psychological functions sleep serves. To do this, we will learn about how sleep is defined and measured, how it is expressed in other animals (some of which live in the water), how it changes across the lifespan, how it is regulated by brain clocks and ‘somnostats’, how modern life interferes with sleep, and how this affects our behavior, brain and body. Sleep disorders and treatments (cognitive behavioral and pharmacological) will also be discussed. Through this course, students will be introduced to concepts and methods in psychology, biology and the health sciences, and will learn how best to manage their own sleep.  

A contemporary view of sleep is that it is ‘of the brain and for the brain’. Students will not be assumed to have taken university biology, but must be willing to learn about of the basics of brain structure and function. This material will therefore serve as an introduction to our gateway course on brain and behavior (PSYC 280). 

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Lecture Topics:
1.      Sleep science foundations
o   A brief history of sleep
o   Definition and measurement: behaviour,  brain and physiology in sleep.
o   Sleep regulation: somnostats, circadian clocks and ultradian rhythms
o   Do all animals sleep?

2.      Why do we sleep?
o   Methodological approaches for studying the function of sleep
o   Hypothesis: Sleep is for energy conservation and safety
o   Hypothesis: Sleep is for brain development
o   Hypothesis: Sleep is for recovery from ‘wear/tear’ of waking
o   Hypothesis: Sleep is a component of the immune system
o   Hypothesis: Sleep is for synaptic homeostasis.
o   Hypothesis: Sleep is for brain plasticity (learning and memory)

3.      What could go wrong?
o   Primary sleep disorders: insomnia, apnea, narcolepsy
o   Parasomnias:  sleep walking, restless legs, nightmares
o   Pregnancy and menopause
o   Aging and dementia: does disrupted sleep with age contribute to symptoms of dementia?
o   Psychopathology:  mood disorders, psychosis.

4.      Controlling sleep:
o   Drugs for inducing ‘sleep’.
o   Drugs that keep us awake.

5.      Sleep and the 24h society:
o   Is there an optimal amount of sleep for a healthy lifespan?
o   Is there a ‘natural’ sleep pattern?
o   Sleep across cultures, sleep before electric lighting; sleep in preindustrial societies.

6.      Policy implications: 
o   School start times
o   youth sports
o   daylight savings time
o   medical practises
o   industrial shiftwork

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: