Sleep as a teaching tool for integrating respiratory physiology and motor control

Sleep exerts major effects on most fundamental homeostatic mechanisms. Current data suggest, however, that students of physiology and medicine typically receive little or no formal teaching in sleep. Because sleep takes up a significant component of our life span, it is proposed that current teaching in systems and integrative physiology is not representative if it is confined to functions describing wakefulness only. We propose that sleep can be readily integrated into various components of physiology and medical curricula simply by emphasizing how commonly taught physiological processes are importantly affected by sleep mechanisms. In our experience, this approach can be used to reinforce basic physiological principles while simultaneously introducing sleep physiology into the students' training. We find that students have a general and inherent interest in sleep and related clinical disorders, and this proves useful as an effective means to teach the material. In this paper, examples of how sleep influences motor control and the respiratory system will illustrate these points. These considerations also highlight some important gaps in traditional teaching of respiratory physiology.