National Geographic

in the brain, and the study of sleep shifted fromphilosophy to science. It’s only in the past fewdecades, though, as imaging machines haveallowed ever deeper glimpses of the brain’s innerworkings, that we’ve approached a convincinganswer to Aristotle.Everything we’ve learned about sleep hasemphasized its importance to our mental andphysical health. Our sleep-wake pattern is acentral feature of human biology—an adapta-tion to life on a spinning planet, with its endlesswheel of day and night. The 2017 Nobel Prize inmedicine was awarded to three scientists who,in the 1980s and 1990s, identified the molecu-lar clock inside our cells that aims to keep us insync with the sun. When this circadian rhythmbreaks down, recent research has shown, we areat increased risk for illnesses such as diabetes,heart disease, and dementia.Yet an imbalance between lifestyle and suncycle has become epidemic. “It seems as if weare now living in a worldwide test of the nega-tive consequences of sleep deprivation,” saysRobert Stickgold, director of the Center forSleep and Cognition at Harvard Medical School.The average American today sleeps less thanseven hours a night, about two hours lessthan a century ago. This is chiefly due to theproliferation of electric lights, followed bytelevisions, computers, and smartphones. Inour restless, floodlit society, we often think ofsleep as an adversary, a state depriving us ofSLEEP 47