The anesthetic, known as ethyl carbamate or urethane, provides researchers with a tool to more thoroughly investigate ways of treating sleep disorders and improving existing sleep medications.

“Most general anesthetics used for surgery and available medications used to treat sleeplessness promote what is called slow-wave sleep at the expense of the other main stage of sleep known as rapid eye movement or REM sleep so people tend to wake up groggy,” says Clayton Dickson, one of the study’s co-authors and an associate professor of psychology, physiology and neuroscience at the University of Alberta in Canada.

The findings suggest that ethyl carbamate can induce the full spectrum of the stages you would see during natural sleep; allowing researchers to fine-tune sleep medications and anesthetics, benefiting patients.

Ethyl carbamate is not suitable for use in human consumption because of the high chemical dosage required. However, neuroscientists, physiologists and others in the field the can use the research findings to unravel the mysteries of sleep.

*adapted from EurekAlert press release