A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(July 2020) |
Matthew Walker | |
---|---|
Born | Matthew Walker 1972or1973(age 50–51) [1] |
Alma mater |
|
Known for | Why We Sleep |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Sleep [2] |
Institutions | Harvard University University of California, Berkeley |
Thesis | A psychophysiological investigation into fluctuating levels of consciousness in neurodegenerative dementia (1999) |
Website | sleepdiplomat |
Matthew Walker is a British author, scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. [2] [3] [4] [5]
As an academic, Walker has focused on the impact of sleep on human health. He has contributed to many scientific research studies. [2] Why We Sleep (2017) is his first work of popular science. [6]
Walker was born in Liverpool, England, and was raised in that city and Chester. [7] Walker graduated with a degree in neuroscience from University of Nottingham in 1996. He received a Ph.D. in neurophysiology from Newcastle University in 1999, [8] where his research was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) Neurochemical Pathology Unit. [9]
Walker has spent most of his career working in the United States.
In 2004 Walker became an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. In one experiment he conducted in 2002, he trained people to type a complex series of keys on a computer keyboard as quickly as possible. One group started in the morning and the other started in the evening, with a 12-hour time interval for each group respectively. He and his colleagues found that those who were tested in the evening first and re-tested after getting a good night's sleep improved their performance significantly without a loss of accuracy compared to their counterparts. [10] [11]
Walker left Harvard in 2007 and has taught as a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Walker is the founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, which is located in UC Berkeley's department of psychology, in association with the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the Henry H. Wheeler Jr. Brain Imaging Center. The organisation uses brain imaging methods (MRI, PET scanning), high-density sleep electroencephalography recordings, genomics, proteomics, autonomic physiology, brain stimulation, and cognitive testing to investigate the role of sleep in human health and disease. It researches Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, cancer, depression, anxiety, insomnia, cardiovascular disease, drug abuse, obesity, and diabetes. [12]
In 2018 Walker collaborated with research scientists at Project Baseline in developing a sleep diary. [13] Project Baseline is led by Verily (a life sciences research organisation of Alphabet Inc.). As of 2020 Walker states on his website that he is "a Sleep Scientist at Google [helping] the scientific exploration of sleep in health and disease." [14]
Walker's first book was Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (2017). [15] He spent four years writing the book, [16] in which he asserts that sleep deprivation is linked to numerous fatal diseases, including dementia. [17] The book became a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK, [18] and a New York Times Bestseller in the US. [19] It has also been published in Spanish and in traditional Mandarin Chinese in 2019 by Commonwealth Publishing Group.
Why We Sleep was subject to criticism by Alexey Guzey, an independent researcher with a background in economics, in an essay entitled "Matthew Walker's 'Why We Sleep' Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors". [20] [21] Guzey, together with Andrew Gelman, a statistician at Columbia University, accused Walker of falsification of data in an article published in Chance . [22] Guzey and Gelman argued that "it is unethical to reproduce a graph and remove the one bar in the original graph that contradicts your story". [22] Gelman suggested that the case entered into the territory of "research misconduct." [23] [24]
Walker claimed on numerous occasions, including in Why We Sleep, that the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared, "a global sleep loss epidemic." [6] The WHO denied his claim, and Walker subsequently conceded that his assertion had been "misremembered," and was actually attributable to a claim from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2014. [25]
Walker failed to disclose that numerous meta-analyses involving over four million adults found the lowest mortality was associated with seven hours of sleep, and that the increased risk of death associated with sleeping more than seven hours was significantly greater than the risk of sleeping less than seven hours as defined by a J-shaped curve. Psychologist Stuart J. Ritchie criticised Walker's approach in his book. "Walker could have written a far more cautious book that limited itself to just what the data shows, but perhaps such a book wouldn't have sold so many copies or been hailed as an intervention that 'should change science and medicine.'" [26]
In 2019 Walker gave a TED talk entitled "Sleep is your superpower". [27] [28] [29] Markus Loecher, Professor for Mathematics and Statistics at Berlin School of Economics and Law criticised its claims and the veracity of its facts. [30]
Walker has a short-form podcast, The Matt Walker Podcast, focusing on sleep, the brain, and the body. [31] [3]
Walker has been a guest on the podcast, Huberman Lab [32] [33] [34] [35]
An article written by Walker published in Neuron in August 2019 was retracted in July 2020, at the request of the author, after it was found to have considerable overlap with an article of his previously published in The Lancet . [36]
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system, its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, psychology, physics, computer science, chemistry, medicine, statistics, and mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons, glia and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "epic challenge" of the biological sciences.
David Eagleman is an American neuroscientist, author, and science communicator. He teaches neuroscience at Stanford University and is CEO and co-founder of Neosensory, a company that develops devices for sensory substitution. He also directs the non-profit Center for Science and Law, which seeks to align the legal system with modern neuroscience and is Chief Science Officer and co-founder of BrainCheck, a digital cognitive health platform used in medical practices and health systems. He is known for his work on brain plasticity, time perception, synesthesia, and neurolaw.
Rachel Sarah Herz is a Canadian and American psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist, recognized for her research on the psychology of smell.
Andrew Eric Gelman is an American statistician and professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University.
Neuroscience Research Australia is an independent, not for profit medical research institute based in Sydney, Australia.
Carol A. Barnes is an American neuroscientist who is a Regents' Professor of psychology at the University of Arizona. Since 2006, she has been the Evelyn F. McKnight Chair for Learning and Memory in Aging and is director of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. Barnes has been president of the Society for Neuroscience and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and foreign member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
Matthew Dylan Lieberman is a Professor and Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab Director at UCLA Department of Psychology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences.
Carl D. Marci is a physician, scientist, entrepreneur and author of the book, Rewired: Protecting Your Brain in the Digital Age. He is currently Chief Psychiatrist and Managing Director at OM1, a venture-backed health data company using artificial intelligence to improve patient outcomes. He is also a senior advisor to early stage health tech start-ups and a part-time psychiatrist within the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Vox is an American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media. The website was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, and is noted for its concept of explanatory journalism. Vox's media presence also includes a YouTube channel, several podcasts, and a show presented on Netflix. Vox has been described as left-leaning and progressive.
Dimitri Michael Kullmann is a professor of neurology at the UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London (UCL), and leads the synaptopathies initiative funded by the Wellcome Trust. Kullmann is a member of the Queen Square Institute of Neurology Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy and a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.
Patrik Verstreken is a Belgian neuroscientist, highly cited in his field. His work is focused on the function of neuronal synapses during health and neurological disease. Major contributions include identifying molecular mechanisms by which neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease spread throughout the brain and identification of new defects causing Parkinson's disease.
The Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute is a non-profit institute founded by husband and wife Tianqiao Chen and Chrissy Luo with the aim of supporting study into the human brain. In 2016 the couple committed US$1 billion to support the institute's work, which focuses on research in three core areas – brain discovery, brain treatment and brain development. Towards that end, the institute supports interdisciplinary research concerning neuroscience, particularly research on brain mechanics, perception, and the impact of perception on behavior and well-being.
Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams is a 2017 popular science book about sleep written by Matthew Walker, an English scientist and the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in neuroscience and psychology. In the book, Walker discusses about the importance of sleeping, the side effects of failing to do so and its impact on society.
Power posing is a controversial self-improvement technique or "life hack" in which people stand in a posture that they mentally associate with being powerful, in the hope of feeling more confident and behaving more assertively. Though the underlying science is disputed, its promoters continue to argue that people can foster positive life changes simply by assuming a "powerful" or "expansive" posture for a few minutes before an interaction in which confidence is needed. One popular image of the technique in practice is that of candidates "lock[ing] themselves in bathroom stalls before job interviews to make victory V's with their arms."
Moran Cerf is an American-French-Israeli neuroscientist, professor of business, investor and former white hat hacker.
Nicola J. Allen is a British neuroscientist. Allen studies the role of astrocytes in brain development, homeostasis, and aging. Her work uncovered the critical roles these cells play in brain plasticity and disease. Allen is currently an associate professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Hearst Foundation Development Chair.
Mark S. Blumberg is an American professor, neuroscientist, researcher, and author who specializes in the fields of developmental psychobiology and behavioral neuroscience. He is currently an F. Wendell Miller Professor and department chair in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa. In addition to writing academic research articles, Blumberg has served as the editor-in-chief of Behavioral Neuroscience and authored several books, including Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution. His research also appeared on a 2020 episode of the Netflix series, Babies.
Giles Yeo is an American-British biologist. He is the professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the Medical Research Council Metabolic Diseases Unit and scientific director of the Genomics/Transcriptomics Core at the University of Cambridge.
David M. Holtzman is an American physician-scientist known for his work exploring the biological mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration, with a focus on Alzheimer's disease. Holtzman is former Chair of the Department of Neurology, Scientific Director of the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders, and associate director of the Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. Holtzman's lab is known for examining how apoE4 contributes to Alzheimer's disease as well as how sleep modulates amyloid beta in the brain. His work has also examined the contributions of microglia to AD pathology.
Jessica Hullman is a computer scientist and the Ginni Rometty associate professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University. She is known for her research in Information visualization.