A study of 25 people finds that Pavlovian conditioning to an allergen can induce a placebo allergic reaction to the environment in which the allergen was encountered--but only if the participants slept rather than stayed awake during the night following the initial allergen exposure; the results suggest that sleep consolidates the conditioned response to allergens, according to the authors.
Article #19-20564: "Human sleep consolidates allergic responses conditioned to the environmental context of an allergen exposure," by Luciana Besedovsky, Mona Benischke, Jörg Fischer, Amir S. Yazdi, and Jan Born.
MEDIA CONTACT: Jan Born, University of Tübingen, GERMANY; e-mail: jan.born@uni-tuebingen.de ; Luciana Besedovsky, University of Tübingen, GERMANY; e-mail: luciana.besedovsky@medizin.uni-tuebingen.de
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences