Sleep Research

This week, I thought I'd talk about my job at Penn. I work as a research assistant for a group of insomnia researchers. At the moment, there are four different studies that are going on, each of which focuses on a different aspect of insomnia. The first study is almost over, and is the one I have been working on the longest. It involves the stress response and its role in insomnia. The idea is that if people suffering from insomnia are stressed before going to bed, their sleep will get worse and they will have a different salivary cortisol response to the stressor than healthy sleepers. The fun part of the study, for me, is the "stress" night...where I get to use an electric shock machine to administer a mild shock to the wrist of the participants. That is the initial stressor, as well as the knowledge that they could be shocked up to three times during the night. Before shocking them, of course, I show them that the shock is not that bad by administering it to myself.

The other study I am most involved in is a study examining the treatment of insomnia in cancer survivors. The study compares the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) treatment with or without the use of a drug that is intended to reduce daytime fatigue. CBT-I is supposed to help those who suffer from insomnia manage their sleep habits at night in order to increase their sleep time and their sleep efficiency (which is a measure of time asleep vs. time spent in bed). The drug should help with insomnia by reducing daytime fatigue and allowing the person to actually be tired enough at night to fall asleep. So together these treatments should be better than either one alone. The study is double-blind (of course), with those participants not receiving the medication receiving a placebo instead. My role is mainly in recruitment of participants from the cancer clinic at Penn, as well as consenting/screening participants who seem eligible.

The other two studies I am less involved in, but I will detail in a later post.