Sleep: Neurobiology, Medicine, and Society
by Ralph Lydic, Helen Baghdoyan · Coursera
University of Michigan course on the biology and medicine of sleep: neural control of sleep and wakefulness, circadian rhythms, insomnia and its treatment, sleep-disordered breathing, psychiatric links and daytime sleepiness. Learners understand why sleep matters for health and performance and how sleep disorders are treated.
More resources on Sleep Science
Kryger's Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine (7th Edition)
The field's standard two-volume clinical reference, seventh edition (2021), spanning sleep neurobiology, chronobiology, polysomnography and scoring, and the diagnosis and management of every recognized sleep disorder across adult and pediatric populations.
Life Time: The New Science of the Body Clock, and How It Can Revolutionize Your Sleep and Health
Oxford circadian neuroscientist Russell Foster explains the body clock: how light entrains it, what chronotypes mean, and how misalignment from shift work and jet lag affects metabolism, immunity and mental health. Cites the primary literature throughout.
Path to Better Sleep (VA digital CBT-I)
Free public program from the US Department of Veterans Affairs delivering digital cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia: a sleep-disorder screening questionnaire, sleep-behavior education, a six-week self-guided CBT-I course with sleep diary, and sleep apnea material. The 'what the evidence says about improving sleep' half of the topic note, delivered as the actual intervention rather than a summary of it — sleep restriction, stimulus control and cognitive restructuring, the components the AASM 2021 guideline gives its single STRONG recommendation to.
The two-process model of sleep regulation: Beginnings and outlook
Borbely's open-access review of the two-process model he originated: homeostatic Process S interacting with circadian Process C. Traces the model from 1970s rat experiments through human sleep deprivation studies to synaptic, molecular and local-sleep findings. Source-of-record, written by the person who built the model everything else in this topic implicitly assumes.
Sleep Education (American Academy of Sleep Medicine)
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's patient-facing reference covering the five sleep disorder categories — insomnia, hypersomnias, parasomnias, sleep-related breathing and movement disorders — plus sleep studies, CPAP, cognitive behavioral therapy, and an accredited sleep center directory.
How Sleep Works (NHLBI)
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's sleep hub explains NREM and REM stages, the 80-to-100-minute cycle, the sleep/wake circadian clock, why sleep matters, and how much sleep different ages need. Short but mechanistically correct — it teaches sleep architecture and the sleep/wake cycle rather than sleep-hygiene tips, and its sibling pages form a coherent starting sequence.