Talk:Segmented sleep
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I don't believe it is necessary to have a period of between-sleep wakefulness in the middle of the night in order to experience this peace and inner quiet and creativity. From my experience, at least, just staying up really late results in the same mental-psychological state. Same thing happens when one sleeps the entire day and is awake during the night. I guess it just has something to do with being awake around or after midnight, in general.
I added the original research tag as a quick google reveals that virtually every reference to this term comes back to EKIRCH who wrote the page linked at the bottom of the article. The term seems to be his invention? 84.71.164.145 07:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
A Roger Ekirch is a profesor of Early American History at Virigina Tech (http://www.history.vt.edu/Ekirch/index.html) and author of "At Day's Close: Night in Times Past." W. W. Norton & Company, 2005 ISBN: 0393050890. This appears to be one of his principal areas of research .Some critics have doubted some of the conclusions he draws his work ( http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/050530crbo_books) but not his scholarship nor the evidence he presents for segmented sleep. In any case these conclusions do not appear in the wikipedia article.
Other academics have done research on this phenomenon. This article ( http://www.newstarget.com/016768.html) refers to the work of National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) psychiatrist Dr. Thomas A. Wehr. (Cited by Ekirch elsewhere: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/opinion/19ekirch.html). The article here does rely extensively on the paper linked to, though this is a valid reference. Perhaps it can be expanded/rewritten to included citations to the work of Wehr. Wehr's work is the sleep research being refered to, though it is likely that the claim made for prolactin come second hand through Ekrich, and it is difficult to judge whether these claims are Ekrich's own interpretation or come from the original research (though this is the source for the increase in prolactin levels).
Thomas A. Wehr, "A 'Clock for All Seasons' in the Human Brain," in Hypothalamic Integration of Circadian Rhythms, R. M. Buijs, et al., eds. (Amsterdam, 1996), 319–40; Wehr, "The Impact of Changes in Nightlength (Scotoperiod) on Human Sleep," in Neurobiology of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms, F. W. Turek and P. C. Zee, eds. (New York, 1999), 263–85; Natalie Angier, "Modern Life Suppresses Ancient Body Rhythm," New York Times, March 14, 1995; personal communications with Thomas Wehr, December 23, 31, 1996. (ekrich citations in linked article)
Tallus 20:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
