I’m definitely bad at playing paddle tennis, and no, that’s not a bad nuisance. It’s not that it’s a “bad standard”, I’m so bad I’m almost certain it’s a crime in some countries. This has understandably caused one of my fitness partners to want to break up with me one after another.

Some start with “it’s not you, it’s me”; others are more direct and padel trying to persuade me at different times in our lives. But the excuse that surprised me the most was that of a kid who said he would play to lose paddle tennis, that he rested better when he lost, and that it was impossible to do that with me. The funny thing is, according to what was just published in Science magazine, it’s possible that he was right.

The dream that fixes you. And, according to a new study in mice, the stress caused by being eaten activates midbrain cells in such a way that sleep is preferred and anxiety is reduced. This is interesting because stress is normally associated with insomnia, but it can also be the other way around: chronic stress is known to increase REM sleep.

The latter has led some researchers to hypothesize that sleep plays a key role in the adaptive response to stressful situations and ultimately helps to ameliorate its negative physiological and mental effects. The study in mice in particular is interesting because the “stress response caused by a loss of social coping” to which these animals are subjected is often used as a model of psychosocial stress. So, what we learn about this condition is usually easy to pass on to people.

How does all this work? Until now, the mechanisms underlying this improvement in sleep have not been clear. With this research, Xiao Yu and colleagues evaluated brain circuits involved in stress-induced sleep from social defeat and discovered a small cluster of neurons in the ventral tegmental region of the midbrain dedicated to perceiving stress and inducing behavior.

As they explain, the subset of neurons receives information about stress and supports the recovery of REM and non-REM sleep for several hours. It also inhibits the release of the corticotropin-releasing factor (responsible for stress regulation). This means that overall, sleep initiated in this way reduces stress levels and restores mental and bodily functions in mice by reducing stress-induced anxiety.

A sleeping pill in glory. This has interesting implications because, while it is true that “not everyone can respond to social defeat with a sleep attack” and this individual variation “requires further research,” pinpointing the neurological circuitry allows us to approach this restorative sleep from a different vantage point. view. pharmacological perspective. So, the “sleep well” pill is much closer than we think.

Image | Oliver Sjostrom