Fulbright award for sleep scientist

Fulbright award for sleep scientist

Sleep scientist Sarah-Jane Paine has won a Fulbright Travel Award to present her PhD research at a leading international conference.

Ms Paine holds the Health Research Council Mäori Health PhD Scholarship, and is based at the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at the Wellington campus.

She will present a paper at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, the world’s premier meeting on sleep science and medicine, to be held in the United States in June.

Her PhD research, titled Circadian versus Psychosocial Factors in Habitual Sleep Timing, investigated the prevalence of morning-type and evening-type people. Morning-type people, or early birds, get up early and prefer to be active in the morning. On the other hand, evening-type people, or night owls, stay up late.

“The study found that one in four New Zealanders aged 30–49 are morning people, one in four are evening types, and the rest are in the middle,” says Ms Paine.

She also investigated the contributions of circadian physiology versus social factors (work patterns, family and social commitments) in determining individual differences in sleep timing.

Her research was innovative in that participants were able to sleep in their own homes and no restrictions imposed on their sleep prior to coming to the sleep laboratory at the Sleep/Wake Research Centre. Additionally, the participants were aged 30-49 years.

“These features contrast with most other research in this area, which imposes regimented sleep schedules on participants, and/or restricts participation to young adults, who often experience different social influences on their sleep timing,” she says.

Ms Paine will meet leading international researchers at Harvard Medical School’s Division of Sleep Medicine, participate in their Sleep Medicine Day and present a lecture.

The Sleep/Wake Research Centre is a multi-disciplinary team that works to improve the health, performance, safety, and well-being of New Zealanders through basic and applied research.

ENDS

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