They say they haven't slept a wink, but tests show they were asleep all night. Figuring out this bizarre insomnia could tell us more about waking brains too
CHRIS RENNIK walked into the sleep clinic with a familiar complaint: he couldn't sleep, his nights were terrible, he was going nuts. Michael Bonnet duly checked Rennik into his clinic at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, to run the usual battery of tests. What he found surprised him – Rennik (not his real name) was in fact sleeping like a baby.
"Then somebody's made a mistake," Rennik said, "or there's something here you don't understand." Rennik was right about that.
People like him are a puzzle for physicians. They are tortured by their inability to sleep, but if you dissect their sleeping patterns in the lab, what emerges is hour after hour of perfectly normal repose. ...
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