I submitted a research proposal to ARIA that will be familiar to readers of the blog. I am reproducing it here.
We spend a third of our time sleeping, far more than any other activity; it’s natural to assume that the time we spend sleeping is a fact of life.
However, individuals known as “short-sleepers” need only 4 hours of sleep each night and experience no ill effects. Researchers have identified several mutations which lead to short sleep, some of which implicate the hormone Orexin. There is also evidence that Orexin can reduce the effects of sleep deprivation.
The existence of short sleepers suggests that it may be possible to reduce sleep need in the general population. The benefits of sleep-reducing therapies would be enormous. Everyone would have more time to spend on their hobbies, careers, or with friends and family. Reducing sleep need from 7 to 4 hours per night would give each person the equivalent of 14 additional years of life; I estimate that this would add $15 trillion per year to the global economy.
Research on reducing sleep need is neglected given its massive potential. It may be possible to develop a pharmaceutical that reduces the time required for restful sleep. This would empower individuals to choose their own sleep duration and pave the way for future therapies.
Because sleep reduction in the general population does not address a recognized disorder, there is little support for it in the public or private sector. ARIA can discover these therapies by examining the genes associated with familial natural short sleep, identifying druggable targets for these genes, and running trials to understand the effects of these therapies in healthy individuals.
I hope ARIA will consider pursuing this goal, as it has been neglected by traditional research institutions for decades. These treatments could have a huge impact, giving everyone more time to follow their dreams.
Researchers I proposed for the roundtable:
Prof. Ying-Hui Fu, Dept. of Neurology, University of California San Francisco (http://neugenes.org/test/faculty-and-staff/). Prof. Fu uses neurogenetics to study the genetic basis of sleep disorders; her team identified a variant in the DEC2 gene which reduces sleep need in humans (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-019-0476-7).
Alexey Guzey, Executive Director, New Science (https://newscience.org/). Mr. Guzey has conducted several influential reviews of sleep research (https://guzey.com/theses-on-sleep/) and runs a nomprofit dedicated to building new institutions for basic science.
Prof. Jerome M. Siegel, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences Dept., University of California Los Angeles (https://www.semel.ucla.edu/profile/jerome-siegel-phd). Prof. Siegel studies sleep disorders, with a focus on the hormone hypocretin, which reduces the effects of sleep deprivation (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18160631/) and causes narcolepsy in deficient individuals (https://www.semel.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/sleep/narcolepsy-cataplexy.pdf).
Prof. Emerson M. Wickwire, Dept. of Psychiatry, University of Maryland (https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/profiles/Wickwire-Emerson/). Prof. Wickwire studies sleep disorders and is an expert on the economic impact of sleep deprivation (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-0123-1_7).
Christian R. Baumann, MD, Associate Professor of Neurology, University of Zurich (https://esrs.eu/member/christian-baumann/). Prof. Baumann studies sleep medicine and the neurological basis of sleep-wake cycles; his work includes a striking case study in which a patient developed short-sleep after brain surgery (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24533006/).
EDIT: looking back on this, Emmanuel Mignot and Masashi Yanagisawa would make excellent members of this roundtable as well.
Harsimony 