The Matt Walker Podcast

#03 Circadian Rhythms Continuing on from last week’s episode about sleep pressure, today, Matt Walker dives into the second half of the sleep-wake story, circadian rhythm.  Matt explains that your circadian rhythm, or your 24-hour internal clock, begins drumming out its loud activating beat just before you wake in the morning and gets louder throughout the day, peaking in the early afternoon and h...

Episode 02:  Sleep Pressure Welcome back to the Matt Walker podcast. Today’s episode looks at the story of sleep pressure - how it works, how you can try to block it or fool it, and why you feel so good after a night of full, peaceful sleep.  Matt explains that from the moment you wake up, a chemical called adenosine begins to build up in your body. The longer you’re awake, the more adenosine will...

Episode 01:  Highlights Human sleep has been separated into two main types: Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep NREM sleep is further divided into four stages, with each stage increasing in their depth of sleep REM sleep is named this way because of the bizarre, horizontal, shuttling eye movements that occur underneath your eyelids during this stage of sleep REM...

The Matt Walker Podcast is all about sleep, the brain, and the body  ·  Matt is Professor of Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley  ·  He is the author of the book, Why We Sleep, and has given a few TED talks  ·  Matt is an awkward British nerd who adores science and the communication of science to the public.