CCNY Medical Professor Maria Felice Ghilardi is studying "local sleep" in humans.
Dr. Maria Felice Ghilardi, associate medical professor in The City College of New York's Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, has received a $2.17 million National Institutes of Health grant to study “local sleep” in humans. Local sleep occurs when individual neurons in the brain of a waking person enter a state that closely resembles sleep.
Entitled “Do single neurons need to sleep and why? Investigating the functional significance of local sleep in humans,” her five-year project is the third component of a larger $8 million study also involving the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Professor Ghilardi’s research will seek to determine if sleep in humans occurs locally, in small circumscribed regions of the cerebral cortex, during normal waking hours and if it is related to intense learning in those areas of the brain. The study will also attempt to establish whether local sleep is associated with specific human errors and if napping could prevent local sleep and its consequences.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided low-cost, high-quality education for New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. More than 16,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in: the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture; the School of Education; the Grove School of Engineering; the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, and the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. U.S. News, Princeton Review and Forbes all rank City College among the best colleges and universities in the United States.