Larks and owls tend sleep lab subjects
Cicadas sing from tall oaks above a sun-dappled white cottage on the pastoral grounds of Butler Hospital. In the building's dimly-lit underground laboratory, research assistant Ron Brizzie monitors equipment recording brain waves, muscle activity and heart rates of three sleeping, electrode-laden 11-year-olds. Each youngster is in a private room, visible to Brizzie via video screen. And each believes it's the middle of the night.
This is the E.P. Bradley Sleep Research Laboratory, one of the world's only facilities devoted to studying the biological changes behind why teens fall asleep later at night and wake up later in the morning.
For college students interested in human biology research, a summer job there means an apprenticeship with Mary Carskadon, lab director and professor of psychiatry. An internationally recognized sleep researcher, Carskadon's findings on delays in the onset of teen sleep are being used by school districts in several states to push back high school start times.
To youngsters in the studies, each apprentice must be part scientist, camp counselor and chaperone. Once below ground, the young people lose all cues as to the time of day, causing them to follow their natural internal sleep/wake clocks. This inner rescheduling allows Carskadon to test whether biological clocks do indeed slow as youngsters enter adolescence.
"We pay them a lot of attention such as watching videos with them and doing a lot of talking," says Brizzie, who recently graduated from the University of California, San Diego. "It's like they have an older brother or sister around all the time to play games."
The research assistants are divided among three six- to eight-hour work shifts. Steve Balsis, a senior at the College of the Holy Cross, is an "owl," an apprentice who arrives after dark and toils until 4 a.m. When his hitch ends, he is replaced by an early riser, called a "lark."
"The kids don't know it's the middle night, and we cannot give them any time cues," said Balsis, who has worked in the lab for two summers. "They may have lunch at 2 a.m., or they may wake up at midnight and think its morning."
While the pre-teens sleep, the apprentices, supervised by the lab's permanent technical staff, oversee the polygraph, electrocardiogram and other equipment. Saliva collection is one of their more unusual scientific duties when the youngsters awaken. At intervals daily, each youngster chews a cotton ball or spits into a tube. Saliva is checked for level of melatonin, a hormone that marks biological time. The subjects are also put through computerized performance tests that measure their drowsiness.
This summer, under a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Carskadon hired more than a dozen college students for the position of "summer sleep and chronobiology behavioral science research apprentice."
Just after Memorial Day, the research assistants, primarily Brown students or new graduates, arrive at the lab. Because the summer research projects are a complex blend of sleep, biological rhythms and human development, their first two weeks are devoted to 8 to 10 hours a day of biology lectures, explanations of experimental design and hands-on lab work.
In mid-June, the apprentices accompany Carskadon to New Orleans for the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. There, they mingle with the world's leading sleep clinicians and researchers and find time to explore the culinary, musical and other delights of the Big Easy.
Upon their return, the research assistants meet their first study volunteers. Depending on the design of the studies, these pre-teens will spend from three days to three weeks in the lab.
Several times during the summer, the apprentices attend sleep biology colloquiums, featuring up-and-coming research investigators brought in by the NIH grant. In the third week of August, each apprentice gives a 10-minute presentation and turns in a paper on a sleep-related topic. Brizzie, for example, examines trends in new treatments for narcolepsy. Balsis explores treatments for elderly insomniacs.
Before last year, Carskadon would hire a handful of students for summer jobs. In 1997, those opportunities became apprenticeships. This year marks the first time the positions are part of a grant-funded academic program and course, listed as Psychology 106, Sleep and Chronobiology Research, offered as an undergraduate summer session program. The NIH grant covers the tuition of 13 apprentices.
Research assistant Sarah Schmitt, a Brown senior and neuroscience concentrator, looks forward to learning how this summer's experiments add to what the lab has already discovered about biology and teen sleep patterns. Given the demands of the research, Schmitt salutes the volunteers. "These kids deserve a lot of credit for what they are doing," she says.
Brizzie agrees. After taking courses at Brown this summer, he will join the lab as a full-time employee for the next year. Then he plans to attend medical school, and hopes to become a pediatrician.
"The kids are great, and they don't mind not knowing what time it is," says Brizzie, as he notes on the jagged lines of a polygraph printout that one of the sleepers are tossing and turning. "When the kids are awake in the lab, they're busy. But we all have a lot of fun."