Human Sleep: Research and Clinical Care

Sleep plays an important role in the history of the neurosciences. On Easter Monday in 1920, Otto Loewi was awakened in the night by a dream in which he conceived of neurotransmitters communicating across the synapse. He quickly made notes, but in the morning he could not understand his scribbles. The following night, the dream came again. He wrote down his thoughts more carefully and, the next day, conducted the crucial experiment that launched modern neu­ rophysiology (Koelle, 1986). Sinc...