
Even if people will not need as much sleep, they will still need downtime, he insists. Some individuals might be forced or pressured to take medication so they could work more hours. “If true, this would indeed have ‘potential therapeutic implications,’ as well as provide another point of entry for exploring and answering the question ‘Why do we sleep?’ which remains of the greatest mysteries in neuroscience.”īut as Jamie Zeitzer, an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, notes, “There often are trade-offs.” Zeitzer says he worries that even if a drug like this could be produced without causing significant side effects, it would still have social consequences. “I find the concept of a gene product that might potentially provide protection against comorbid disorders of restricted sleep tantalizing,” says Patrick Fuller, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved with the work. The mice also needed less sleep, remembered better and suffered no other ill effects, according to a study published today in Science Translational Medicine.Īlthough a medication with the same benefits will not be available anytime soon-and might never materialize-the idea is incredibly appealing: take a pill that replicates whatever the father and son’s body does and sleep less, with no negative repercussions.

Then the scientists intentionally made the same small genetic spelling mistake in mice.

To understand this rare ability, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, first identified a genetic mutation-in both individuals-that they thought might deserve the credit. We all wish we could get by on less sleep, but one father and son actually can-without suffering any health consequences and while actually performing on memory tests as well as, or better than, most people.
