Within the School of Psychology (St Albans Campus) a special purpose Sleep Laboratory has been constructed. This consists of two fully equipped bedrooms, an experimental/ equipment room, and an ensuite bathroom. The room is sound attentuated and separately airconditioned.
The Sleep Laboratory is equipped with a Polysomnograph (which records brain waves and other physiological indices necessary for measuring sleep behaviour). The Sleep Laboratory was established in late 1993. It is an excellent facility for projects by students at Honours, Masters or PhD level.
Some of the activities are listed below:
Research:
- Study of the interaction between performance and sleepiness in people with narcolepsy (a disorder of daytime sleepiness).
- Evaluation of different methods for assessing sleep fragmentation in insomniac patients.
- Time required to arouse from a smoke detector signal as a function of decibel level and sleep stage.
- Decision making and sleep inertia after arousal with an alarm signal.
- Arousal to olfactory stimuli resembling an early fire cue.
- Use of actigraphy to document the effects of stimulants on sleep/wake behaviour in pathological sleepiness
Education:
- Development of familiarity with polysomnography for 3rd year Psychology students.
- Learning about sleep and sleep recordings for visiting VCE Psychology students.
Media
- Filming for the ABC program "Towards 2000" about arousal from sleep in emergencies.
- Filming for Channel Seven News about children's poor ability to arousal to smoke alarms.
The Sleep Laboratory has been established under the direction of Professor Dorothy Bruck. For further information please ring (03) 9919 2336.
