Dieter Riemann PhD

Dieter Riemann, Head of the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychophysiology / Sleep Medicine at the University Medical Center Freiburg. With his lecture, "Healthy and disturbed sleep - why sleep is important for our physical and mental health", he initiated the audience into some of the key findings in sleep medicine. The lecture gave, among other things, an insight into the health-maintaining functions of sleep. It wasn't until the 1950s that science began to understand that healthy sleep is a product of surprisingly dynamic rhythms, phases, and cycles.

In the second part of the lecture, common causes of sleep disorders were discussed. Prof. Riemann also pointed out the fact that changes in personal sleep patterns are not always caused by morbid dysfunction or unusual external stress. For example, the deeper sleep phases naturally shorten with increasing age. Older people report frequent episodes of nocturnal insomnia, which actually do not occur more frequently in old age, but only get a little longer and are therefore more intensely remembered in older people.