

The Secrets of Sleep - alexjmann
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2010/05/sleep/max-text

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davi
'"Sleep has been the Rodney Dangerfield of med­icine," says John Winkelman,
medical director of the Brigham and Women's Hospital's Sleep Health Center in
Brighton, Massachusetts. "It just gets no respect."'

A lot of neuroscientists I know, including myself, find sleep to be deeply
interesting. But at this point in the development of our field, it's a
difficult phenomenon to get a handle on.

edit: That the thalamus might be implicated in a sleep disorder is consistent
(along with a bunch of other findings) with the Francis Crick's 'searchlight'
hypothesis: <http://www.pnas.org/content/81/14/4586.abstract>

