The Neuroscientist Behind the World’s Largest Sleep Study on the Importance of a Good Night’s Rest

By Adrian Owen I’m Professor Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist whose research focuses on brain imaging, cognitive function and consciousness. I’ve been fascinated with the human brain for more than 25 years: how it works, why it works, and what happens when it doesn’t work so well. I run a lab at Western University in Canada, where we investigate human cognition through studies of sleep, anesthesia, vegetative state and other so-called ‘states of consciousness’. We also specialize in conducting large population-based studies of brain function involving tens of thousands of members of the public. For example, my lab conducted the largest study in history to investigate whether brain-training games actually make you smarter (pro-tip: they don’t). In another huge study, we asked whether IQ is a good measure of general intelligence (pro-tip: it’s not). We’ve also learned that up to one in