Biomarkers of Sleepiness
Contemporary sleep researchers, including Paul Shaw of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have been pursuing development of biological indicators, or biomarkers, of sleepiness. In December 2006, Shaw reported online in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that his lab had shown that levels of amylase increased in fruit fly saliva when the flies were sleep-deprived. He then showed that human amylase also increased as human subjects were deprived of sleep.
Read more about this topic: Sleep Onset Latency