ReviewEvolution, medicine, and public health2016
Shining evolutionary light on human sleep and sleep disorders.
Review in Evolution, medicine, and public health, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 110 citations in OpenAlex.
- Beyond canonical homeostasis: Dynamic, plastic, and intermittently unregulated physiology as the norm.Physiological reports · 2026Review
- The Effect of Migration on Perceived Safety and Sleep Quality: An Analysis From Rural and Urban Indigenous Wixárika Communities in Jalisco, Mexico.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Systematic Review on the Association Between Sleep and the Risk of Alzheimer's Disease: An Evolutionary Perspective.Evolutionary applications · 2026Review
- Not All Stress Is the Same: Variable Associations Between Psychosocial Stressors and Urinary Cortisol Rhythms in a Small-Scale Subsistence Society.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- Assessing Sleep Architecture in Rural Eastern Cape Villagers of South Africa Using ŌURA Ring Data.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- People Living in Places with Limited Illuminance Declare Better Health and Higher Quality of Life in Environmental and Physical Domains.Clocks & sleep · 2026Article
- Sleep in neurodegenerative diseases: A focus on melatonin, melanin-concentrating hormone and orexin.Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2025Review
- Breathwork for Chronic Stress and Mental Health: Does Choosing a Specific Technique Matter?Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Local versus global sleep organization and the quest to determine sleep function.Neurobiology of sleep and circadian rhythms · 2025Article
- The Disputable Costs of Sleeping.Biology · 2025Review
- A cross-sectional survey of the prevalence and patterns of using cannabis as a sleep aid in Canadian cancer survivors.Journal of cancer survivorship : research and practice · 2025Article
- Phenome-wide Analysis of Diseases in Relation to Objectively Measured Sleep Traits and Comparison with Subjective Sleep Traits in 88,461 Adults.Health data science · 2025Article
- The Impact of Sleep: From Ancient Rituals to Modern Challenges.Sleep science (Sao Paulo, Brazil) · 2024Article
- Individual sleep need is flexible and dynamically related to cognitive function.Nature human behaviour · 2024Review
- Childhood unpredictability and sleep quality in adulthood: the mediating roles of life history strategy and perceived stress.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Animal models of human insomnia.Journal of sleep research · 2023Review
- Sleep Pathologies and Eating Disorders: A Crossroad for Neurology, Psychiatry and Nutrition.Nutrients · 2023Review
- The influence of sleep on job satisfaction: examining a serial mediation model of psychological capital and burnout.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Sound reasons for unsound sleep: Comparative support for the sentinel hypothesis in industrial and nonindustrial groups.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2023Article
- Nocturnal selective pressures on the evolution of human musicality as a missing piece of the adaptationist puzzle.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sleep is essential to cognitive function and health in humans, yet the ultimate reasons for sleep-i.e. 'why' sleep evolved-remain mysterious. We integrate findings from human sleep studies, the ethnographic record, and the ecology and evolution of mammalian sleep to better understand sleep along the human lineage and in the modern world. Compared to other primates, sleep in great apes has undergone substantial evolutionary change, with all great apes building a sleeping platform or 'nest'. Further evolutionary change characterizes human sleep, with humans having the shortest sleep duration, yet the highest proportion of rapid eye movement sleep among primates. These changes likely reflect that our ancestors experienced fitness benefits from being active for a greater portion of the 24-h cycle than other primates, potentially related to advantages arising from learning, socializing and defending against predators and hostile conspecifics. Perspectives from evolutionary medicine have implications for understanding sleep disorders; we consider these perspectives in the context of insomnia, narcolepsy, seasonal affective disorder, circadian rhythm disorders and sleep apnea. We also identify how human sleep today differs from sleep through most of human evolution, and the implications of these changes for global health and health disparities. More generally, our review highlights the importance of phylogenetic comparisons in understanding human health, including well-known links between sleep, cognitive performance and health in humans.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.