Drug Research and Human Sleep

We spend a third of our lives asleep and, on average, as we grow older, we become less and less satisfied with it. In developed countries there are more and more old people, and so drugs that are intended to improve sleep or to relieve anxiety have been sold and consumed in ever-increasing quantities. The study of human sleep can, however, teach us about more drugs than just those used as hypnotics. Whereas the waking brain is at the mercy of ever-changing environmental events and the anxiety that they engender, the time of sleep is one during which the brain has relative freedom from the fitful fluctuations of daily life. It is a time that is consequently well-suited to examination of how the human brain responds to the introduction, maintenance or withdrawal of many drugs, including some not prescribed for clinical effects on sleep, that range from eserine to antidepressants. As an example, debrisoquine, used to treat hypertension, and often assumed not to have any central action, has a potent effect in selectively diminishing the duration of paradoxical (REM) sleep [1].