-Located at the University of Granada’s Mind, Brain and Behaviour Centre (CIMCYC in Spanish), it includes four rooms totally equipped for sleep behaviour research.
– The facility boasts an investment of more than €150,000 and will provide key infrastructure for research for the University of Granada’s new Sleep Research Department initiated this morning.
The University of Granada (UGR) and local resting equipment provider Grupo Lo Monaco will partner to carry out research on the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up processes of sleep study in the university’s new Sleep Research Department, presented this morning.
University of Granada’s dean Pilar Aranda Ramirez, and Grupo Lo Monaco’s president Livio Lo Monaco have signed the agreement that initiates this Research Department at the university’s Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Centre which houses the Sleep Research Lab, the largest of its kind in Europe.
According to the agreement, Lo Monaco will provide financial backing and professional expertise to perform the research included in the programme, as well as equipment to be used at the Sleep Laboratory.
The new Sleep Research Department of the UGR – Grupo Lo Monaco will be focused on the development of joint projects of research; contract financing, grants and financial support for researchers and interns; redaction of research projects and doctoral theses and other publications; transfer of the research findings to the company and support for patent publications, as well as organisation of courses, seminars, conferences or other educational and publicising activities.
According to Grupo Lo Monaco’s president Livio Lo Monaco: “Technology, materials innovations, science and businesses working together, will start a veritable revolution in the world of sleep in the next few years”.
Visiting the Sleep Laboratory
After signing the agreement, Pilar Aranda and Livio Lo Monaco visited the University of Granada’s Sleep Laboratory accompanied by the laboratory’s director Gualberto Buela, and the Mind, Brain and Behaviour Centre’s director Andrés Catena, where they could see the research conducted at this centre.
The Sleep Laboratory has all the necessary facilities to ensure a comfortable and homely resting environment.
This includes a waiting room where visitors can wait while the equipment is being prepared, as well as two bathrooms and a kitchen. Each of the four research rooms are totally equipped to perform the polisomnography (the most common type of sleep study), and include a bed, a bedside table, lamp, and wardrobe. In these rooms researchers measure the cerebral activity of patients.
Each room is occupied by a single patient, which means the facility can perform up to four sleep studies simultaneously. The rooms provide the necessary conditions for performing the sleep studies: they are properly insulated from sound and light, and conditioned for temperature and humidity.
The facility also includes an observation room, where the technical specialist observes any developments occurring during the study, and provides any required assistance to the patient.
In this laboratory, and from today on under the University of Granada and Grupo Lo Monaco’s joint new Sleep Research Department, research is conducted on insomnia, fibromyalgia, sleep deprivation, hyperactive children’s sleep, children’s sleep disruptions, music and sleep (or how to use music to improve sleep); sleep apnoea, nightmares, night terror and sleepwalking, or how altitude and other aspects of the resting environment affects sleep.
The facilities of the Sleep Laboratory at University of Granada are worth more than €150,000 and are the most technologically advanced of their kind. They are also portable, which gives researchers the flexibility to conduct research at a patient’s home, for example.
They also include equipment such as actigraph units, which are worn on the wrist and measure the patient’s movements over 24 hours. The Mind, Brain and Behaviour Centre also includes functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment to enhance sleep research capacities.
For more information visit:
http://www.ugr.es/~sleep/laboratorio/index_archivos/Page496.htm
Contact:
Gualberto Buela Casal
Department of psychological behaviour, evaluation and treatment
Sleep Laboratory director, University of Granada
T: 0034 958 243 750
E-mail: gbuela@ugr.es
