Francesca Belouad, MA, is a Research Psychologist in GEB-SDGE. She is responsible for administrating interviews and overseeing clinical aspects of the NIMH Family Study. Francesca has been employed as a Research Psychologist at the NIMH since 2000, when she was recruited by Dennis Charney, MD, during the formation of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Research Program. Prior to this, she held research positions at the Section on Development Psychology at the NIMH, Outpatient Psychiatry at the Washington Veterans Medical Center, and the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
Francesca s work has focused on the writing and submission of the original NIMH Family Study protocol and the development and selection of research measures. She currently administers headache, psychiatric, sleep, and family history interviews to adults and children at initial and follow-up time points. She conducts reviews of clinical assessments a
On Nights Before a Full Moon, People Go to Bed. On Nights Before a Full Moon, People Go to Bed Later and Sleep Less, Study Shows
For centuries, humans have blamed the moon for our moods, accidents and even natural disasters. But new research indicates that our planet’s celestial companion impacts something else entirely our sleep.
In a paper published Jan. 27 in Science Advances, scientists at the University of Washington, the National University of Quilmes in Argentina and Yale University report that sleep cycles in people oscillate during the 29.5-day lunar cycle: In the days leading up to a full moon, people go to sleep later in the evening and sleep for shorter periods of time. The research team, led by UW professor of biology Horacio de la Iglesia, observed these variations in both the time of sleep onset and the duration of sleep in urban and rural settings from Indigenous communities in northern Argentina to college students in Seattle, a city of more than 750,00
Credit: University of Washington
For centuries, humans have blamed the moon for our moods, accidents and even natural disasters. But new research indicates that our planet s celestial companion impacts something else entirely our sleep.
In a paper published Jan. 27 in
Science Advances, scientists at the University of Washington, the National University of Quilmes in Argentina and Yale University report that sleep cycles in people oscillate during the 29.5-day lunar cycle: In the days leading up to a full moon, people go to sleep later in the evening and sleep for shorter periods of time. The research team, led by UW professor of biology Horacio de la Iglesia, observed these variations in both the time of sleep onset and the duration of sleep in urban and rural settings from Indigenous communities in northern Argentina to college students in Seattle, a city of more than 750,000. They saw the oscillations regardless of an individual s access to electricity, though the variation