Coming program

The Enough Sleep Consortium will have their Final Meeting in Turin, Italy, October 18th, 2008.
This will be held in connection with the Proust Conference “Genes at Work on Time”.
More about the program on www.europroust.org.
Prior to the Proust conference, there will be a special venue “The time span of sleep:
what determines sleep duration?”. This venue is hosted by Dr Tarja Porkka-Heiskanen,
coordinator to the Enough Sleep project.

Problem into focus:
“The time span of sleep: what determines sleep duration?”
dedicated to the memory of Dag Stenberg

Organized by Tarja Porkka-Heiskanen, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Helsinki, Finland
Co-ordinator of the project: Disorders of sleep regulation: basic mechanisms and therapeutic
perspectives, ENOUGH SLEEP, LSHM-CT-2005-518189

Program
Venue: International Labour Organisation Training Center, Viale del Lavoro 10, Turin

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

10:30-10:40     Introduction
  Tarja Porkka-Heiskanen, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Helsinki, Finland:
    
10:40-11:10  Are there human genes that regulate sleep duration?
                         Tiina Paunio, University of Helsinki, Finland:
   
11:15-12:00  Short sleeping flies: implications for human sleep regulation
                         Chiara Cirelli, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA:
   
12:05-12:25  Sleep in sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasi):  More or less sleep?
                         Krister Kristensson, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden:
           
12:30-13:00  Is it the duration or intensity of waking that regulates recovery sleep?
                         Tarja Porkka-Heiskanen, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Helsink, Finland:
           

Several aspects affect sleep duration, including genes. We know that some people are short-sleepersand some long-sleepers, and we know that this is genetically determined, but presently we do not know which genes regulate the duration of sleep.
Dr. Paunio’s group has initiated a human genomics study to address this question.
She will report the results of her project in the symposium.
 
Animal models, particularly genetically engineered animals, are useful in addressing many
genomic questions.
Dr. Cirelli has created and studied numerous fly mutants. Useful information concerning
normal regulation of physiological functions often arises from pathophysiological models.

Dr. Kristensson has studied trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) as one approach to sleep regulation.

Sleep is homeostatically regulated, meaning that a long waking period is followed by a
long sleep period. The mechanisms of this regulation at the molecular level have been
the topic of Dr. Porkka-Heiskanen’s research. The interesting question is, what aspects
in the prolonged waking actually can induce the prolongation of subsequent sleep –
is it the duration of waking per se, or perhaps the intensity of the waking period.