[sci.bio] Chaos and Sleep

kurt@think.com (Kurt Thearling) (02/01/91)

Has anyone looked into the possible relationship between neural/biological
chaos and sleep?  I recently read "How Brains Make Chaos in Order to Make
Sense of the World" (Skarda and Freeman, Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
1987) and immediately thought about the possibility of sleep being used to
"re-synch" biological rhythms.  Has any work in this area been done?

kurt

ps.  Can anyone recommend some good review articles on why humans sleep?
I already have "Human Body Clocks and the Timing of Sleep" (Winfree,
Nature, 1982).  Thanks.

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Kurt Thearling                                  Thinking Machines Corp.
                                                       245 First Street
kurt@think.com                                     Cambridge, MA  02142
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mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) (02/02/91)

In article <1991Jan31.194333.27330@Think.COM> kurt@think.com (Kurt Thearling)
writes:
>Has anyone looked into the possible relationship between neural/biological
>chaos and sleep?

Go out and look for articles by Leon Glass.  He has recently been
working on the cardiac system (I think) but he worked quite hard on
apnea (spelling?) for awhile.  Some of his work is quite likely to be
relevant to your interests.

				Marc R. Roussel
                                mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca