NP: Arcade Fire, Funeral

Via Lifehacker, another interesting article on sleep. This one's more about insomnia than about the unaffected physiology, but two passages caught my eye:

As a result, the most powerful attack on the monster of insomnia is to do nothing at all. The first and best approach to sleeplessness is to let the sleep homeostat right itself, without making any attempt to compensate. It's also possible that the prompt use of a sleeping pill -- say after a couple of sleepless nights, rather than after several wretched months -- can get the natural mechanism back on track.

Embedded (no pun intended, honest) in that paragraph is a large chunk of my overall attitude toward pharmaceutical treatment. Use them to nudge the system into behaving properly on it's own, rather than replacing the system entirely by artificial means.

Then there's this part:

But the depressed are on a fast track to dreamland. They dive too quickly into REM sleep, which lasts nearly twice as long as it does in the nondepressed. It's also a souped up version of the REM phase. It's more intense -- parts of the brain that deal with emotions are more activated and the depressed sleeper tends to fidget much more.

It looks like part of the relationship between creative genius and total neurosis/psychosis is in there somewhere, doesn't it? I'd be very curious to see if any studies have been done to that effect.