Discover the political factor that keeps you up at night

New discoveries by a research team from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) promise to create a new revolution in the treatment of insomnia.

According to SciTech Daily, Professor Anita Lüthi from the Department of Biology and Medicine of the University of Lausanne and colleagues have identified the role of a brain region called "locus coeruleus" in cases of insomnia.

According to a paper published in the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience , the "locus coeruleus" region is located in the brainstem and is a regulator of sleep and sleep disorders.

Insomnia and difficulty sleeping can be caused by abnormal activity in a brain region - (Illustration by AI: ANH THU).

This region plays an important role in the transition between NREM and REM sleep while maintaining subtle, unconscious awareness of the external environment.

NREM sleep is non-rapid eye movement sleep, which makes up the majority of our sleep time, including levels from light to deep; while REM sleep is the rapid eye movement stage, which is extremely necessary for the brain to recover and is associated with dreams.

New research shows that stress in any form disrupts the functioning of the locus coeruleus, leading to reduced sleep quality.

The above mechanism was discovered through a series of experiments on mice, which clearly showed that the locus coeruleus was hyperactive if the mouse experienced stress while awake.

This results in delayed REM sleep onset and fragmentation of NREM sleep by causing excessive awakenings.

This explains why people who are stressed find it difficult to fall asleep deeply, wake up unusually easily during the night, and then toss and turn.

Additionally, because it is responsible for being the 'gatekeeper' of the sleep cycle, this brain region may be behind all sorts of insomnia and sleep disorders that people experience.

According to Professor Lüthi, this discovery paves the way for clinical research to find a treatment for insomnia, a sleep disorder that affects the lives of many people.