Tuscan Vernacular

1917

Year Charles Klauder, who developed CU Boulder’s “Tuscan vernacular” architectural style, first visited campus

15

CU buildings designed

14

Number built

1921

First (Hellems)

1947

Last (McKenna Languages, after Klauder's death)

1

New edition of Body & Soul, book about CU Boulder's architecture 

Good News for Early Risers

Early risers may be less prone to depression, according to one of the largest studies yet to explore the link between sleep-wake preference and mood disorders. 

Researchers at CU Boulder and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston looked at sleep-wake preferences and depression rates for 32,000 female nurses and found that early birds were 12 to 27 percent less likely to develop depression.

So: Stop staying up late to watch Netflix. Doctor’s orders.

For details of the study, visit CU Boulder Today

Heard Around Campus 

Love them, comfort them, calm them down, make them feel safe and secure and let them know you care for them.”

 

— CU emeritus professor Marc Beckoff, author of Canine Confidential: Why Dogs Do What They Do, on helping pets through grief, in the Huffington Post.

Barbie’s Got Brains

Casey Fiesler is taking down stereotypes — one Barbie at a time. 

The CU assistant professor of information science won notice in 2014 after critiquing Mattel’s Barbie for its representation of women in technology. The company responded with a job offer.

Fiesler contributed to Mattel's new book Code Camp with Barbie and Friends, which teaches children to code and encourages girls and women to pursue careers in STEM. The book was recently released along with a new doll, Robotics Engineer Barbie.

© iStock/benimage (clock). Photo courtesy Casey Fiesler (Barbie)

Related Articles

The Light of the Great Outdoors 

American adults don’t sleep enough: On the average work night, we come up 30-90 minutes short of what our bodies need for long-term health, according to a poll by the National Sleep Foundation.

Maybe we should go camping more often.

Recent research by CU Boulder sleep experts Ellen Stothard and Kenneth Wright show that exposure to the natural light and total darkness available outdoors helps reset our internal clocks in as little as two days — a weekend camping trip. By resetting our clocks, we get a chance to establish a more satisfying sleep pattern back at home. 

• 7-8: Hours of sleep adults typically need daily for long-term health
• 6 hours, 31 minutes: U.S. average on work nights
• 50-70 million: U.S. adults have a sleep disorder; insomnia is most common
• Exposure to electric light at night delays narural sleep rhythms
• A pattern of delayed sleep is associated with obesity, diabetes, mood disorders and other health problems 

“Modern environments can significantly delay our circadian timing, and late circadian timing is associated with many health consequences. But as little as a weekend camping trip can reset it.” — Kenneth Wright

The Camping Effect

• One weekend of camping can reset our internal clocks
• Two-day camping trips can jumpstart production of the sleep-regulating hormone melatonin, promoting sleep at an earlier time 
• Camping is especially effective at resetting our internal clocks because it exposes us to far more natural light than we get in the typical built environment
• Our bodies respond quickly to the natural light/dark cycle

Sleep Tips 

• Avoid caffeine, alcohol and large meals near bedtime
• Be regular: Go to bed and wake up at the same times daily
• Get bright natural light, especially in the morning
• Shut off smartphones and laptops two hours before bedtime

Fun Facts About Sleep 

• 73% of U.S. adults watch TV before bed
• 64% of Americans find lavender a relaxing scent before bed
• 2: The average number of pillows per U.S. adult 

Information from: Kenneth Wright study, “Circadian Entrainment to the Natural Light-Dark Cycle across Seasons and the Weekend,” published in Current Biology; CDC; the National Sleep Foundation; the American Sleep Association 

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Wilderness Impacts on Sleep

Integrative physiology professor Kenneth Wright conducted a study on the influence of natural versus electrical lighting on our sleep patterns. 

How has electricity impacted our sleep?

When electrical lighting became widely available in the 1930s, it changed our internal clocks, which tell us when to sleep, eat and beyond. Our research aimed to determine how much modern light exposure has impacted our internal clocks. 

Describe the study.

We gave eight participants, ages 23-42, wrist devices that measured sleep and exposure to light during their normal routines for a week. Then we brought them into the lab for 24 hours to measure their melatonin levels. When melatonin rises, it leads to a number of physiological changes that prepare us for sleep. When it decreases, it signifies the start of our biological daytimes. 

Then you sent them camping?

Yes. Flashlights and electronic devices were prohibited for a week of backpacking near Silverthorne, Colo. Participants were exposed to light levels 400 times brighter than during their normal daily activities. This led to their biological nighttimes beginning near sunset and ending at sunrise. Sleep differences between early birds and night owls reduced dramatically. 

Is light exposure at night bad?

It pushes our internal clock later. This can be good because it can increase our productivity at night. But people still wake up early to go to work or school. That’s when it becomes an issue because melatonin levels may indicate they’re still in their biological nighttimes for several hours after they wake up.  

What can we do to sleep better?

It’s important to get exposed to natural light during the day, so take a walk or sit by a window. At night, dim lights and turn off your computer and TV a couple of hours before going to sleep. If you have a sleep problem, speak with your doctor.

Illustration ©csaimages

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Skipping naps might not be a good idea, says CU-Boulder sleep researcher Monique LeBourgeois whose research suggests long-term loss of sleep can heighten a toddler’s anxiety.

Anyone who has been around little kids much can tell you this — if children miss just one nap, it can make them grouchy.

But according to a first-of-its-kind study of 2-to-3-year-olds by CU-Boulder sleep researcher Monique LeBourgeois, it can do much more than that, blunting capacity for joy, heightening anxiety and diminishing ability to recognize they need help. If sustained, she says, sleep deprivation may even stunt their emotional growth, interfere with relationships and increase the risk of behavioral and cognitive problems later in life.

“This is an important time for the development of emotion regulation, language, fine motor skills and cognitive control processes [such as attention, planning and problem solving], but it is also the point when a lot of kids stop napping,” says LeBourgeois, director of CU-Boulder’s Sleep and Development Laboratory, which is part of the integrative physiology department. “It’s a vulnerable window for them to start missing out on much-needed sleep.”

While numerous sleep studies have been done on adults and adolescents, LeBourgeois notes little research has been done on preschoolers. Armed with a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health, and training from renowned adolescent sleep researcher Mary Carskadon with whom she studied at Brown University, LeBourgeois is working to fill that gap via a unique program in which she transforms family’s homes into a modern-day sleep lab to measure sleep physiology and behavior in kids.

For the nap study, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, she and her colleagues videotaped the facial expressions of 10 healthy children who typically got at least 12.5 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period, including an afternoon nap. One day they were taped an hour after their normal nap. Another day they were taped an hour after being deprived of their nap. Each time the children were asked to work on a fun, kid-friendly puzzle with all of the nine colorful pieces available. Then they were asked to work on another puzzle, which unbeknownst to them included a wrong piece.

Researchers then coded their facial expressions on a second-by-second basis, tracking emotions like joy, interest, excitement, anxiety, disgust, shame and confusion. The differences between nap and no-nap days were stark.

On no-nap days the toddlers met the unsolvable puzzle with 31 percent more negative emotions like worry and anxiety.Surprisingly, on no-nap days, kids also experienced 34 percent fewer positive emotions, meeting the joy of accomplishment with a flat, unfeeling affect akin to that seen in people suffering from depression.

All that from missing just one nap. So just imagine what happens when a child is sleep deprived day after day.

“It’s really sad,” LeBourgeois says. “Think about kids who are chronically sleepy and how they approach their world. If they have that flat response over and over again, those are the neural pathways that are going to be reinforced,” perhaps boosting risk of depression and other problems.

The nap-deprived kids also showed 39 percent less “confusion” when they attempted the unsolvable puzzle. And in this context, notes LeBourgeois, confusion is a good thing. It indicates the child is engaged and realizes something is wrong, and that look on their face often elicits help from adults, be it a teacher or parent.

Ann Halbower, a doctor and director of pediatric sleep research at Children’s Hospital in Denver, calls the paper “a very important one” which offers clues  to why — at least anecdotally — kids who sleep less tend to have learning problems as they get older.

“If a child is not acting confused or acts negatively when presented with something new, they are not going to open their minds to new information and they are not going to learn as much,” she says.

Meanwhile, CU-Boulder sleep researcher Kenneth Wright says sleep-deprived children’s muted outlook on the world may change the way other people relate to them.

“When they are playing and having fun, adults will interact with them more,” he says.

Thus far little research has been done to track the long-term behavioral and cognitive impact of sleep loss in early childhood. Those studies are in the works. But Wright believes the take-home message of LeBourgeois’ work is already clear.

“We have to recognize that sleep is as important as good nutrition and physical activity for young children, and we need to take that into consideration when we schedule their days,” he says.

LeBourgeois has already begun a new research project that will use saliva samples to measure the hormones cortisol and melatonin, nap and overnight sleep EEG recordings, neurodevelopmental tests and other measures to explore how changes in sleep and circadian physiology impact young children’s health and development over time.

Ultimately she hopes her work will lead people to realize how important sleep is for young children.

“As far as I know, there is no other lab in the world studying these physiological processes in such depth in young kids,” LeBourgeois says. “Knowledge is power.”

Photos courtesy Gina Rogers (top) and Casey A. Cass

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Taking a popular sleep medication greatly increases your chance of falling if you get up while sleeping, according to a study by CU-Boulder associate professor Kenneth Wright of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory and integrative physiology department.

Fifty-eight percent of the older adults — ages 63-79 — and 27 percent of the younger ones who took a hypnotic, sleep-inducing drug called zolpidem showed a significant loss of balance when awakened two hours after going to sleep, according to the study. Wright’s research included 25 patients.

Zolpidem is widely prescribed worldwide and is known as Ambien, Zolpimist, Edluar, Hypogen, Somidem and Ivedal.

The findings are important because falls are the leading cause of injury for older adults — 30 percent of those 65 and older who fall require hospitalization. Furthermore, those who took zolpidem and woke up after two hours of sleep experienced enhanced sleep inertia, or grogginess, a state that temporarily impairs working memory.

“The balance impairments of older adults taking zolpidem were clinically significant,” Wright says, “and the cognitive impairments were more than twice as large compared to the same older adults taking placebos.”

Photo by istockphoto.com

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