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A fourth-year health studies course at �������ϲʿ����ӿ� is exploring a crucial aspect of life — one we tend to ignore far too often. 

“Sleep is reflected everywhere, it’s in all functioning, pathology, injuries — everything that you can imagine,” says Tatyana Mollayeva, who developed and teaches Sleep: Structure, Function, and Pathology. 

Sleep is intricately related to many aspects of life, but as an area of study it remains largely neglected, says Mollayeva, an instructor in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Health and Society.  

She references a , which found that across 12 countries (including Canada), medical schools spend an average of two and half total hours teaching students about sleep throughout their education. Mollayeva recalls spending even less time than that on sleep when earning her medical degree in Moscow. 

“I think that in general as a society, we truly neglect sleep. We are for activity and performance, but we do need to realize that sleep state is crucial to cognition, behavior and other aspects of daytime functioning,” she says. 

The highly-reviewed course debuted last year and was offered again this semester. At the end of the course’s first run, Mollayeva was so proud that she was moved to tears reading a final assignment by two of her students — “because it was better than I could do it.”

Maryam Zulfiqar, one of the students behind that assignment, is still using what she learned about how sleep impacts the brain’s ability to metabolizes glucose as she finishes a certificate in bioinformatics.

“I didn’t know the extent of how sleep could be applied to different fields in healthcare and biology,” Zulfiqar says. “All of it was very new to me, because I have never seen sleep being discussed as something that’s medically related.”

Students start with the basics, including why sleep is important, the stages of sleep, changes to sleep structure across the lifespan and theories of dreams. They then cover more complicated topics including sleep disorders, and methods used to diagnose and manage sleep pathology. 

Sleep is extremely complex, and Mollayeva says that sleep medicine is still a developing science — many concepts accepted today may be challenged in the future. The course traces how knowledge has changed with new scientific evidence and technologies, such as neuroimaging techniques. Accordingly, it is also designed to welcome critical thinking and personal reflection.

“If my students truly understand why sleep is important and how pathology of sleep reflects in how they feel or perform the next day, they will have the power to change habits that are not serving them,” Mollayeva says. “Knowledge is the key for students to reflect.”

Most students are at an age when sleep is particularly critical to them, she adds. Not only is sleep crucial to memory consolidation but it’s at a young age that we start developing lifelong habits, good sleeping habits among them. 

What Zulfiqar learned in the course has stuck with her. She tries to avoid using her bed for studying and looking at screens before sleep — and resists temptation to pull all-nighters.

“It really made me think about my sleep cycle, because as a student you’re studying and you stay up late and don’t think about it, but it changed my view on how important it is,” Zulfiqar says. 

In their final research assignment, each student is given a case study with a description of a person experiencing sleep-related issues. They must then figure out which sleep disorder they may have and defend their argument. Zulfiqar’s case study was of a 70-year-old man who went to sleep and woke up early, and was experiencing behavioural changes. 

Though fictional, the case studies are based on Mollayeva’s work in sleep medicine, which recently earned her the first  for her research on sleep dysfunction in traumatic brain injury at U of T’s  and the . 

She also spent several years as a sleep technologist in Toronto’s , where she saw first-hand the ways sleep — or lack thereof — impacts people’s lives.

“The more I got involved, the more patients I encountered, the more family members I encountered, it made me understand that this is a significant issue that calls for attention,” Mollayeva says.