Nobel Conference 60: Sleep Unraveled

Grace LaTourelle-

Nobel Conference 60 returns to Gustavus Adolphus on Tuesday, Oct. 1st through Wednesday, Oct. 2nd, 2024. Unlike years past, the conference will take place in Christ Chapel, with the doors opening at 8:30 a.m. on that Tuesday. The Nobel Conference will conclude with closing remarks at 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday.

Along with the presentations, there will be other opportunities and events taking place over the two days. Musical preludes will begin each session with panel discussions following the sessions. At 3:30 p.m. on both days, the speakers will be able to meet with certain classes. On Tuesday, there will be breakout sessions and the Moth StorySLAM. Wednesday will have opportunities to visit the Schaefer Art Gallery, which will be presenting “Between Dreams: Paintings by Michon Weeks.” The full schedule of events can be found on the Gustavus website.

“The Nobel Conference brings together world-leading thinkers and puts them into conversation with our community. Students have the opportunity to ask questions, to attend classes with the presenters, [and] even to serve as their campus guides. These opportunities to make professional contacts with leading thinkers can be life-changing for students,” Director of the Nobel Conference, Lisa Heldke said.

The conference, through its endowment and spending management, is now free for everyone. This allows more attendees, especially from the surrounding communities, which the cost of tickets might have been a barrier to attendance. Those attending are just asked to fill out a registration form on the website, to allow the college to account and prepare in terms of numbers.

After Nobel Hall was christened in 1963 with permission from The Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, the first conference was held in Jan. 1965 with similar special permission. The first conference was entitled “Genetics and the Future of Man.”

“The Nobel Conference is the most public-facing event the college presents. Anyone who wishes may participate in this annual event, which explores revolutionary, transformative and pressing scientific questions, and the ethical issues that come along with them,” Heldke said. “This event, with its high-profile name, puts Gustavus “on the map” in a certain way.”

“Sleep, Unraveled”, the title of this year’s conference, will ponder sleep from an interdisciplinary perspective. Sleep is involved in endocrine functions, immune functions, as well as memory. The conference aims to discuss sleep from physiological, neurological, and cultural perspectives.

“This year’s topic is wildly important to students. Well, to any humans, but especially to students, who often sacrifice sleep in favor of other things,” Heldke said.

The conference presenters come from a wide array of perspectives as professors, researchers, writers, poets, and theologians. Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Visiting Professor at M.I.T, Robert Stickgold’s presentation is entitled “Sleep, Memory, and Dreams: Pulling it all together.”

“Not that…long ago, we used to think that sleep was just about getting rest,” Stickgold said. “Sleeping is nice. Don’t make it your enemy, make it your friend…and…never make a major life decision based on a dream.”

Stickgold explained that dreams often revolve around an ongoing or current issue. While asleep, the brain works to find weaker memories that might have connections, and form dreams that help the individual make sense of their issue. In his example, he noted that this can lead a person to identify moments where they might be catastrophizing a situation. When the individual wakes up, even if they might not remember the dream, they will associate it when they think of their current problem. This might explain the feeling that a dream carries importance.

“You really need more sleep than you’re getting,” Stickgold asserted. “The benefit of that extra sleep outweighs the loss of the wake time.”

Stickgold also explained that because of memory processing, a night of sleep can help a student memorize facts or complete a skill better.

“Sleep takes what you’ve learned…and actually enhances it over a night of sleep,” Stickgold said.

Director of the Sleep and Circadian Rhythms Laboratory at Bradley Hospital and Director of the COBRE center, Mary Carskadon will also be presenting the science of sleep, from the adolescent perspective. Now in science, Carskadon described her seemingly unconventional path of getting there.

“There’s this tendency to have this sort of straight road ahead that you think you have to follow to get somewhere. And that’s not always true,” Carskadon said. “You don’t need to know exactly what path you want to take. You need to explore a little bit.”

After undergrad, Carskadon worked as a research assistant in a sleep lab.

“…The more I learned, the more I got engaged with, interested in, and inspired by that science…” Carskadon described. “I was plotting by hand some data and I looked at the picture…it’s beautiful, it makes so much sense, it’s lawful, I really like doing this…let’s not stop now. Let’s keep it going’.”

Carskadon’s presentation entitled “Clock, Hourglass, and Teen Sleep” will cover the bioregulatory processes of sleep and how they shift as children develop. One of these shifts occurs as adolescents begin to stay up later but their schools begin to start sooner, the interplay between biology and environment and society.

“It has a potential for real impact,” Carskadon said. “It’s not every student who experiences the same degree of shift in their biology, but for those who do, it really is a major challenge for them to be forced to wake up early in the morning to go to school.”

The conference presentations will pose other social issues related to sleep.

Professor of English at Emory University, Benjamin Reiss will be sharing a presentation entitled “Sleep and Inequality: a history” which looks into how insufficient sleep, which may be attributed to medical problems, is actually a consequence of social inequalities.

“…sleep researchers have shown that Black Americans consistently have more disordered sleep than other racial/ethnic groups: shorter duration, more disruptions, and more insomnia,” Reiss said. “Because there is no genetic reason why this would be so, if we want to understand the root causes of this disparity, we need to inquire into the relationship between poor sleep and the histories that lead to it.”

Reiss also describes sleep as a social activity, in terms of where and with whom one might sleep with. Furthermore, there are ways in which sleep is enhanced or inhibited by societal structures and innovations.

On his campus, Reiss is involved with a team of students, working to create a “Nap map” of “cozy” locations on campus where students might get 15-20 minutes of extra sleep in the day.

“It’s very exciting to be part of this conference.,” Reiss said. “If I have learned one important thing about sleep, it’s that it is as complex as anything we do while we’re awake.  There’s always so much more to learn.”

Students are encouraged to attend as many of the conference sessions and activities as possible, as professors are encouraged to cancel classes during the conference. As many identified, the Nobel Conference is an opportunity for learning.

“In the present day, we need opportunities for serious discussion about challenging issues. The Nobel Conference offers such an opportunity,” Heldke said. “Be confused and go away and talk to someone about your confusion! This is an event like no other.”