Napoleon, illustrious insomniac, is credited with this offensive sentence:? Women and idiots need ten hours of sleep, the wounded eight, and men six.? The truth is that some men and women sleep less than the average without showing fatigue in their daytime activities . This gift could have a biological explanation, according to a recent study by Ying-Hui Fu's team from the University of California.
These researchers have detected that mice with a mutation in the DEC2 gene – a gene that regulates the circadian rhythm – remained in Morpheus arms for 6.25 hours, almost two hours less than the rest. The next morning, both groups of rodents carried out the tasks assigned by the scientists with the same concentration and vitality. Although this mutation is very rare, the finding could shed light on the hereditary factors that make some settle for a few hours of sleep and others sleep like marmots .
