The 2018 meeting will be the third GRC on ?Sleep Regulation and Function?, the second Sleep GRC to include a GRS, and the first conference after we were promoted from a GRC-sponsored meeting to a continuing GRC. As in 2014 and 2016, the 2018 GRC/GRS will be held at the GRC site in Galveston TX. There are many large meetings for sleep professionals, but sleep GRC/GRS clearly meet a widely-felt need: they are the only existing small-format conference focused broadly on the latest basic sleep research, with the specific goal of fostering forward-thinking and innovative approach to sleep science. Both previous sleep GRCs scored in the highest-performing group among all GRCs held in their respective year, with >85% of respondents ranking the meetings as ?excellent? in all categories. Participation was outstanding (199 applications accepted for 2014, 233 for 2016), with 22% (2014) and 25% (2016) of attendees coming from Europe and Asia. Sleep GRCs contributed significantly to grow the next generation of sleep researchers: trainees were 30% of all attendees in 2014 and 40% in 2016. Sleep GRCs also strongly promoted diversity: women represented 44% (2014) and 49% (2016) of all attendees. We believe this success will continue in 2018. The Chair (Dr. Chiara Cirelli, U Wisconsin ? Madison), Vice-Chair (Dr. Paul Shaw, Washington U - St. Louis), and the Steering Committee of 12 eminent sleep researchers planned an outstanding program that spans the breath of the field and reaches out to outside experts, including the Keynote Speaker, Dr. Cristina Alberini (NYU) and Drs Matthew Colonnese (George Washington U) and Heiko Luhmann (U Mainz Germany). None of them has studied sleep per se, but their work on memory consolidation and on the maturation of brain activity soon after birth, when sleep is the predominant behavior, is highly relevant for many of us. The other 7 sessions will discuss the evolving roles of catecholamines in sleep/wake regulation, the cellular and systems? costs of wake for brain and body, the new paradoxes of REM sleep, the global and local determinants of sleep need, the consequences of enhancing/disrupting specific sleep rhythms, the metabolic and vascular effects of sleep disruption. These topics were specifically chosen because thought-provoking and, in line with the subtitle for the 2018 meeting, they are expected to trigger an intense debate on the ?How and Why? of sleep, with the goal of leading to new insights. In addition to including a GRS, the 2018 GRC program will strongly promote the training of young sleep researchers by including 8 early career scientists as GRC speakers or discussion leaders, and 7 trainees (graduate students and post-docs) as GRC speakers. Both Chair and Keynote speaker are women, and so are 38% of the speakers and 78% of the Discussion leaders (~33% for both in 2016). Sleep research is thriving, unraveling the specific mechanisms by which sleep benefits brain and body, from learning and memory to metabolic and cardiovascular function. We expect this meeting to be a crucial milestone that helps the field to move forward in an open-minded and innovative manner.
Sleep Regulation and Function 2018: Narrative Sleep is critical for general health: cognitive, metabolic, cardiovascular, and immune functions all benefit from sleep and are impaired by sleep loss. Yet, we still do not understand exactly why, and how, sleep benefits brain and body. To address these questions, sleep researchers and sleep clinicians are finding ways to effectively manipulate the quality and quantity of sleep to assess short and long-term consequences on health.
