The Mathematics Behind a Good Night’s Sleep

March 19, 2010

This past weekend's "spring forward" adjustment for daylight saving time has most of us reevaluating our sleep schedule. While there have been countless sleep studies, researchers still don't fully understand why we even sleep at all. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) are taking a different approach to the traditional studies by using mathematics.

According to an RPI press release, professor of mathematics Mark Holmes and graduate student Lisa Rogers are developing a computer model to predict how different environmental, medical, or physical changes to a person’s body will affect their sleep. Their model, which they hope can be easily manipulated by other scientists and doctors, will also provide clues to the most basic dynamics of the sleep-wake cycle.

Prior to developing the model, Rogers spent time with neurobiologists at Harvard Medical School learning about the biology of the brain. The information would form the basis of their 11-equation model of the sleep-wake cycle.

“We wanted to create a very interdisciplinary tool to understand the sleep-wake cycle,” Holmes said in the RPI press release. “We based the model on the best and most recent biological findings developed by neurobiologists on the various phases of the cycle and built our mathematical equations from that foundation. This has created a model that is both mathematically and biologically accurate and useful to a variety of scientists."

“This is also an important example of how applied mathematics can be used to solve real issues in science and medicine,” Holmes continued.

Read the full article here.

Source: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Press Release (Feb. 25, 2010)

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