The Causes and Consequences of Sleep in the Human Brain

  • Speaker
  • Laura LewisLaura Lewis, Ph.D.Athinoula A. Martinos Associate Professor of IMES and EECS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Associate Faculty, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital
Date & Time


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Presidential Lectures are free public colloquia centered on four main themes: Biology, Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science, and Neuroscience and Autism Science. These curated, high-level scientific talks feature leading scientists and mathematicians and are intended to foster discourse and drive discovery among the broader NYC-area research community. We invite those interested in the topic to join us for this weekly lecture series.

Sleep transforms nearly every aspect of brain function and is essential for brain health. In this Presidential Lecture, Laura Lewis will discuss how new noninvasive imaging technologies are revealing how sleep arises in the human brain. She will outline key control systems that regulate sleep and behavior. Lewis will also discuss how sleep causes waves of fluid flow in the brain and the relationship between sleep and brain waste clearance, which may be critical for how sleep actively maintains brain health in aging. This work will highlight how sleep profoundly affects the human brain’s high-level cognition and basic housekeeping processes.

About the Speaker

Laura Lewis

Lewis is the Athinoula A. Martinos associate professor in IMES and EECS at MIT and associate faculty at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. She received her Ph.D. in neuroscience from MIT and completed postdoctoral research in biomedical imaging technologies at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Her research develops techniques for imaging the human brain and applies them to study how sleep modulates human brain function.

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