Our systematic review of the literature on pre-sleep mental activity has been accepted for publication as a Clinical Review by the prestigious, high-impact journal, Sleep Medicine Reviews:

Lemyre, A., Belzile, F., Landry, M., Bastien, C., & Beaudoin, L. P. (2019) Pre-sleep cognitive activity: A systematic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews.

This has been an epic research project , in which the papers that met our search criteria were systematically processed. Our paper can help all researchers in the field better understand the state of the science of sleep onset and insomnolence.

We’ve sent feedback on the proofs which are already available online. Update 2020-01-11: the paper is now published online in its final form.

This paper is part of the foundation for the somnolent information processing (SIP) theory (an integrative design-oriented theory of sleep onset and insomnolence) I’ve been developing. Alexandre Lemyre and Dr. Célyne Bastien, co-authors of the above paper, are contributors to the SIP theory.

Why study scientific problems related to sleep onset and insomnolence?

I do research on sleep onset and insomnolence for a variety of reasons.

• My SIP research demonstrates the integrative design-oriented (IDO) approach, which has been at the heart of my R&D since my Ph.D. days (minus a successful stint in unrelated tech startups). With an IDO approach, from an interdisciplinary design stance we seek to deeply understand specific capabilities and phenomena involving the blending of broad cognitive, affective, motivational, executive and ancillary functions. (In my Cognitive Productivity books I referred to this approach as “broad cognitive science”. “Integrative design-oriented” is the new, better term.)
• It’s also very gratifying to be of potential service to so many people through applied research on insomnolence.
• Furthermore, sleep is essential to cognitive productivity, which is the main focus of this blog.