title: "Nature's soft nurse": a sleep-promoting factor isolated from brain.
abstract: A sleep promoting factor has been extracted and purified from cerebrospinal fluid of sleep-deprived goats, from whole brains of sleep-deprived rabbits and from brainstems of slaughterhouse cattle. Intraventricular infusion of the purified material into rats, cats, rabbits or squirrel monkeys induces excess slow-wave sleep in the recipients for several hours following the infusion. The excess sleep appears similar to the deep slow-wave sleep which normally follows sleep deprivation; it is characterized by EEG slow waves of greater than normal amplitude and an increase in both the number and duration of sleep episodes. The sleep factor appears to be a small peptide of molecular weight 350--500 daltons and the effective dose is of the order of a few picomols per gram brain. A similar, perhaps identical, factor is present in human urine.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D002850:Chromatography, Gel; D002854:Chromatography, Paper; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004586:Electrophoresis; D006041:Goats; D009043:Motor Activity; D011817:Rabbits; D051381:Rats; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology; D012892:Sleep Deprivation