The following timeline describes some of the important milestones in the history of sleep research:
| 1875 |
Caton records the brain electrical activity of animals in England. |
| 1877 |
The problem of narcolepsy is first described in the medical literature. |
| 1880 |
Gelineau describes a group of patients in France with a problem he names “narcolepsy.” |
| 1902 |
Loewenfeld coins the term “cataplexy” to describe the onset of muscle weakness that often affects people with narcolepsy. |
| 1929 |
Berger discovers and reports the “electroencephalogram (EEG) of man” in Germany. |
| 1937 |
Loomis documents the EEG patterns of what is now called non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. |
| 1945 |
Ekbom describes restless legs syndrome in Sweden. |
| 1953 |
Kleitman and Aserinsky at the University of Chicago describe the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep and propose a correlation with dreaming. |
| 1956 |
Burwell and colleagues publish a description of the obesity hypoventilation (Pickwickian) syndrome, laying the groundwork for the discovery of obstructive sleep apnea. |
| 1957 |
Dement and Kleitman describe the repeating stages of the human sleep cycle. |
| 1960 |
Vogel recognizes that REM sleep in narcoleptics begins near sleep onset rather than one to two hours later. |
| 1963 |
Wurtman and colleagues report that melatonin synthesis in the pineal gland is under the inhibitory control of light. |
| 1965 |
Oswald and Priest use the sleep laboratory to evaluate sleeping pills. |
| 1966 |
Gastaut and colleagues in France, and Jung and Kuhlo in Germany discover obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). |
| 1968 |
Rechtschaffen and Kales publish a scoring manual that allows for the universal, objective comparison of human sleep stage data. |
| 1972 |
Studies pinpoint the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) as the site of the biologic clock. |
| 1973 |
First report of a narcoleptic dog |
| 1974 |
Holland gives the name “polysomnography” to the overnight sleep study. |
| 1976 |
Carskadon established sleep latency as an objective measurement of sleepiness. |
| 1981 |
Sullivan and colleagues use continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) to treat OSA. |
| 1986 |
Schenck, Mahowald and colleagues publish the first formal description of REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD). |
| 1989 |
Rechtschaffen and colleagues find that total sleep deprivation results in the death of all rats within two to three weeks. |
| 1999 |
Studies show that hypocretin mutations cause narcolepsy in mice and dogs. |
| 2000 |
Mignot and colleagues at Stanford discover that human narcolepsy also is associated with hypocretin deficiency. |
Sources:
Shepard JW, Buysse DJ, Chesson AL, et al. History of the development of sleep medicine in the United States. J Clin Sleep Med. 2005;1:61-82.
Mignot E. History of narcolepsy. A hundred years of narcolepsy research. Arch Ital Biol. 2001 Apr;139(3):207-20.
Kryger MH, Roth T, Dement WC, editors. Principles and practice of sleep medicine. 4th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Elsevier Saunders; 2005.