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A symposium on the physiology and pathology of sleep intended primarily for practicing physicians was held May 1968 at the Brain Research Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles. A distinguished faculty including Kleitman, Jouvet, Dement, and other investigators prominent in this field was assembled for the occasion. The proceedings, edited by Dr. Kales who organized and chaired the symposium, have now been made available in a particularly attractive hard-cover volume.
Present knowledge of the phenomenology of sleep, of the neuroanatomical structures and the physiological and biochemical mechanisms involved is here briefly summarized.
The symptomatology of human sleep is described with particular emphasis on the common clinical disorders of sleep—insomnia, enuresis, narcolepsy, sleep-walking— and sleep disturbances occurring in various illnesses. There is also discussion of the effects on sleep of amphetamines, hypnotics, antidepressants and other drugs widely used today.
The contributions—25 in all—are of uniformly high caliber, brief,