cafe scientifique pm

A really enjoyable evening; wide age range, specialities, disciplines, etc. Lots of questions. Two to follow up, both at the extremes:

1. If part of the sleep-promoting system is peptide(s) driven, what are the processes behind the, as I claim, exponential (ie substrate-driven) breakdown of the peptides ...
2. At the other end, how to promote lucid dreaming? One suggestion from the audience was to incorporate an alarm clock into the pre-sleep planning and use the sound of the alarm clock as the trigger for promoting lucid dream initiation.

Sleep do we need it? - speaking today

Cafe Scientifique

	General Information
	Where : Filmhouse café bar, Lothian Road, Edinburgh When : 8:30pm Web Site: Contact: Cameron Robinson Previous Events Upcoming Events Date: Monday 16th October Title: Sleep - do we need it? Speaker: Chris Idzikowski

Noteworthy

Timbuktu Chronicles

Notes - The Uncommercial Traveller

It is a curiosity of broken sleep that I made immense
quantities of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of course I never
make any when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a certain
language once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly
forgotten from disuse, with fluency.  Of both these phenomena I
have such frequent experience in the state between sleeping and
waking, that I sometimes argue with myself that I know I cannot be
awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so ready.  The
readiness is not imaginary, because I often recall long strings of
the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, after I am broad
awake.

Notes - from Pickwick papers

Every one has experienced that disagreeable state of mind, in
which a sensation of bodily weariness in vain contends against an
inability to sleep.  It was Mr. Pickwick's condition at this
moment: he tossed first on one side and then on the other; and
perseveringly closed his eyes as if to coax himself to slumber.  It
was of no use.  Whether it was the unwonted exertion he had
undergone, or the heat, or the brandy-and-water, or the strange
bed--whatever it was, his thoughts kept reverting very
uncomfortably to the grim pictures downstairs, and the old stories
to which they had given rise in the course of the evening.  After
half an hour's tumbling about, he came to the unsatisfactory
conclusion, that it was of no use trying to sleep; so he got up and
partially dressed himself.  Anything, he thought, was better than
lying there fancying all kinds of horrors.  He looked out of the
window--it was very dark.  He walked about the room--it was
very lonely.

Just past another birthday and time to review

In the few moments there were before it was time to go and get a plane to Edinburgh a blog was born. Probable subject matter - the setting up and running of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre - it's first year and how it integrates within health and medicine. Thoughts about academia, the NHS, private medicine, private healthcare, etc. Occasional forays into sleep, biological clocks, etc ....