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Thursday, May 03, 2007Nature's Soft Nurse: Using magnetic fields to induce sleep: Scientists have invented a technique which they say could help trigger deep sleep in the most chronic insomniac. Using medical equipment, they stimulated the brain with harmless magnetic pulses. These penetrate the nerves that control a type of deep sleep called "slow-wave activity" and made their brains produce these waves. Professor Giulio Tononi led the research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S. He sent the magnetic signal through the skull into a specific part of the brain. There, it activated electrical impulses. In response to each burst of magnetism, the sleeping volunteers' brains produced slow waves typical of deep sleep. "We don't know why, but this was a very good place (in the brain) to evoke big waves that clearly travel through every part of the brain. "With a single pulse, we were able to induce a wave that looks identical to the waves the brain makes normally during sleep," he said. But did it feel like sleep? And what about the electrically sensitive? WHO would like to know. (A more detailed explanation of transcranial magnetic stimulation, with videos, can be found here.) But while we wait for the brain magnets to pass muster, the back page of this week's Newsweek has a solution: Pssst. Most sleep medications are non-narcotic. Lunesta, unlike many sleep aids, happens to not be a benzodiazepine, but it is addicting nonetheless. posted by Sydney on 5/03/2007 07:34:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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