p2pnet - rss feed: Forget caffeine. How about Orexin-A?
p2pnet news | Off Topic:- ‘Reduce sleepiness without edginess’.’
Looks like the punch-line for a new stay-awake drug. Is it a dream?
“Systemic and Nasal Delivery of Orexin-A (Hypocretin-1) Reduces the Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Performance in Nonhuman Primates”.
That’s the header in an article in The Journal of Neuroscience, and it discusses a nasal spray, “containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests”.
The above quote comes, rather appropriately, in Wired under the headline “Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep”.
The Darpa-funded discovery could mean a, “totally new route for increasing arousal, and the new study shows it to be relatively benign,” according to Jerome Siegel (right), a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a co-author of the paper.”It reduces sleepiness without causing edginess,” the story has him saying.
The research found orexin A both stored monkeys’ cognitive abilities and made their brains look “awake” in PET scans and Siegel said it’s unique in that it only affected sleepy monkeys, reversing the effects of sleepiness, “without other impacts on the brain”.
“Such a product could be widely desired by the more than 70 percent of Americans who the National Sleep Foundation estimates get less than the generally recommended eight hours of sleep per night,” says Wired.
No kidding.
But way back, they said much the same about cocaine.
Meanwhile, “Results showed that orexin-A delivered via the intravenous and nasal routes significantly improved performance in sleep-deprived monkeys; however, the nasal delivery method was significantly more effective than the highest dose (10 µg/kg) of intravenous orexin-A tested,” says the journal abstract, going on:
The improvement in performance by orexin-A was specific to trials classified as high versus low cognitive load as determined by performance difficulty under normal testing conditions. Except for the maximum intravenous dose (10 µg/kg), neither delivery method affected task performance in alert non-sleep-deprived animals. The improved performance in sleep-deprived animals was accompanied by orexin-A related alterations in local cerebral glucose metabolism (CMRglc) in specific brain regions shown previously to be engaged by the task and impaired by sleep deprivation (Porrino et al., 2005). Consistent with the differential effects on performance, nasal delivered orexin-A produced a more pronounced reversal of sleep deprivation induced changes in brain metabolic activity (CMRglc) than intravenous orexin-A. These findings provide strong evidence for the effectiveness of intranasal orexin-A in alleviating cognitive deficits produced by loss of sleep.
BRB. Just getting a coffee 
Also See:
The Journal of Neuroscience - Systemic and Nasal Delivery of Orexin-A (Hypocretin-1) Reduces the Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Performance in Nonhuman Primates, December 26, 2007
Wired - Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep, December 28, 2007
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
December 29th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Yea! Now I can watch porn forever!
December 29th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Are corporations going to punch now for 16 hour shifts? After all Unions are at an all time weak.