'Every time it gets excited — boom — it collapses': How dogs with narcolepsy helped scientists understand the disorder
Live Science spoke with Dr. Emmanuel Mignot , director of the Stanford Center for Narcolepsy and co-winner of a coveted Lasker Award.
Melatonin is a hormone that prepares the body for sleep, while orexin stimulates wakefulness. Two scientists, Dr. Masashi Yanagisawa and Dr. Emmanuel Mignot, discovered the function of orexin in 1999. Dr. Mignot, director of the Stanford Center for Narcolepsy, studied narcoleptic dogs, including his Chihuahua Watson and Bear. Their research earned them the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.
Studying narcolepsy in dogs helped reshape our understanding of the disorder and led to treatments for insomnia and narcolepsy.
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