Our Sleep Lab is designed to study and treat disorders of sleep and wakefulness.

Our Sleep Lab is a purpose-built two-bedroom en suite facility located at the Northumbria Centre for Sleep Research. It consists of a fully integrated kitchen, conference room and lounge and laboratory control room. Each bedroom has Bluetooth connectivity to the control room so that video and audio monitoring can be conducted in IP mode but it also means that we can do ‘at-home’ ambulatory studies. We use four main types of assessments to study the sleep/wakefulness cycle.

Psychosocial Assessment

EG, EEG, EMG, EOG, ECG, ERP

Endocrine & Immune Assessment

WE ASSESS BASAL FUNCTIONING OF THE ENDOCRINE AND IMMUNE SYSTEMS SUCH AS E.G., DIURNAL CORTISOL, CORTISOL AWAKENING RISE, CYTOKINES, MELATONIN

Signal Processing

THIS INCLUDES POWER SPECTRAL ANALYSIS (PSA)

ecological paradigms

We utilise ecologically valid paradigms (e.g., multi-tasking) to model the reactivity of the endocrine and immune system.

Defining Sleep & its determinants

This strand of our research aims to uncover the mechanisms underlying the transitions between sleep and wakefulness and how biological, psychological, social, and environmental circumstances affect these normal albeit complex transitions.

Sleep Disorders: Prevention & Treatment

This strand of our research aims to help assess, diagnose, and treat sleep disorders, using a variety of techniques and methodologies, in different populations.

Our expertise and state-of-the-art facilities enables us to study sleep across the life-course beginning in childhood through into older age in both healthy people and those suffering from acute or chronic conditions

Children

Adults

Older Adults

acute & chronic illnesses

How a simple one-hour therapy session has helped to cure 73% of people suffering from acute insomnia

The Sleep Lab provides the opportunity to examine full physiological and sleep /wake parameters over the 24 hour cycle for short or long-term studies. Beyond conducting descriptive studies examining objective markers of sleep quality, quantity, and timing; the Sleep Lab can be used to diagnose ‘clinically relevant’ adverse nocturnal events which impact on sleep and daytime functioning in physically and psychologically ill populations and in patients with neurodegenerative disorders.

Professor Jason Ellis, Director of the Northumbria Centre for Sleep Research