The neurobiologist Michel Jouvet is dead

inesbazdar/epictura

Published the 04.10.2017 at 18h43

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sommeilsommeil paradoxical

The pioneer of the medicine of sleep, Michel Jouvet, joined the kingdom of dreams. A 91-year-old, the former boss of Inserm in Lyon, died in Villeurbanne (Rhône) in the night of Monday to Tuesday.

His discoveries on rem sleep in 1959 revolutionized the research on sleep. Michel Jouvet has, indeed, shown that there was not only the phase of wakefulness and sleep. It showed that there was an in-between, a period during which the brain is very active while the body is asleep. Called rem sleep, this phase is the privileged place of dreams and is involved in the maturation of the nervous system and the storage of memory.

A few years later, it establishes the classification of sleep into different stages based on brain waves. It describes, as well, the phase of nrem sleep characterized by low brain activity, in contrast to rem sleep, during which eye movements are very rapid are recorded.

Former guerrilla

Michel Louvet is also the origin of the discovery of the brain-dead. A concept that he presents for the first time in 1959. He is also interested in clinical research, and has in particular discovered modafinil, a molecule with the properties of anti-sleep. It remains today one of the treatments headlights of narcolepsy and hypersomnia.

All of the work for which the neurobiologist has received many awards and distinctions such as the gold Medal of the CNRS in 1989, or the world Prize Simone and Cino del Duca in 1991.

He has also received the cross of the combatant volunteer of 1939-1945 and the Legion of honor for having joined the resistance during the Second world War, in the maquis of the Jura.