Prof Andrew Coogan works to understand how sleep affects human health ‘out in the wild’ of the real world.
For Prof Andrew Coogan, one of the main challenges in communicating scientific research lies in getting across the “appropriate level of uncertainty”.
For example, as a sleep researcher, he is often asked whether shift work is a risk factor for diseases such as cancer. “Shiftwork is most likely a risk for some cancers, but equally it is by no means the ‘new smoking’ in terms of the magnitude of the risk.
“Conveying such nuances are a key challenge in science communication so that we provide accurate and contextualised information to the public and acknowledge the grey zones and the known unknowns,” he explains.
Coogan is professor of biological psychology at Maynooth University. His introduction to scientific research came by doing a “really good, slightly old-school” degree in biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin before completing a PhD in neuroscience at University College Dublin.
“I really had no idea what a PhD entailed, but I very much enjoyed the technical and intellectual challenges involved, as well as the slightly hysterical sense of fun that we enjoyed in the lab and department.”
This was followed by postdoctoral research at the University of Manchester, where he switched to the field of chronobiology – the science of body clocks and biological timekeeping. After a stint at Swansea University, he took up a role at Maynooth, where he has remained ever since, including some six years spent as head of the Department of Psychology.
“My work at Maynooth has continued in chronobiology and sleep across a range of groups and approaches with a view to really understanding how clocks and sleep work for human health ‘out in the wild’ of the real world.”
Tell us about your current research.
We currently have a number of projects ongoing looking at different aspects of sleep and circadian rhythms in people under different circumstances, be those differences in daily schedules (such as working time or family status) or having a chronic condition such as Parkinson’s disease or diabetes.
For example, we are working with people with narcolepsy, a rare sleep disorder, to try to understand how their symptoms vary within a day and from day to day.
We are also working with people with migraine to examine how sleep changes might predict migraine attacks, and how migraine attacks might impact on sleep.
Another area we are very interested in is sleep timing variability, that is how the time we go to bed and wake up varies from day to day, and how this is related to mental health in the general population and to symptoms in conditions such as bipolar disorder.
A final example is a project looking at subjective age discrepancy, the difference between how old you are and how old you feel, and sleep; it appears that feeling younger is associated with having better quality sleep, but not longer sleep duration.
These projects arise in my research group as part of an ongoing process where one research activity leads to generation of multiple new research questions.
My research is also driven very much by the excellent researchers I get to work with, both as PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, and my collaborators in Ireland and internationally.
Building our professional networks of colleagues at all career stages is such an important and satisfying part of our job, both scientifically and personally.
In your opinion, why is your research important?
Sleep is increasingly recognised as a key pillar of health, in a similar way to diet and exercise. However, much work remains to be done to fully communicate sleep’s importance to the general public, specific patient groups, health professionals and policymakers.
Further, we need to build a better evidence base that will inform how we can intervene to produce better sleep and its knock-on health benefits.
Of central importance is that sleep is modifiable, and that there are several strategies operating from the level of the individual to the level of society that we can use to improve sleep health. Therefore, we have another important lever we can pull to enhance physical and psychological health across the population.
In terms of impact, I think about any given study as forming a small part of an ongoing process over a period of time that eventually translates into better health. Therefore, impact emerges mostly incrementally over time as part of a sustained scientific endeavour, and it is persistence and sustained effort that pushes things forward.
What inspired you to become a researcher?
Ultimately, I am a researcher because I want to understand more about how the world works, and science is the most powerful tool we have with which we can uncover truth about the world. In the same way, I am interested in history, architecture and other things; I want to know why the world is as it is!
To be more specific, when I was an undergraduate, I was really fascinated by the ingenuity and inventiveness of researchers, both in the conceptual framing of their areas of research and also in their technical innovations to actually build the experiments needed to make fundamental advances. I remember being struck by the elegance of Oswald Avery’s experiments in the 1940s which showed that DNA was the genetic material. This combination of clear thinking and technical virtuosity is what we are always chasing as researchers.
What are some of the biggest challenges or misconceptions you face as a researcher in your field?
There is a lot of ‘wellness’ type misinformation about sleep on social media, promoting ‘sleep hacks’ that are not evidence-based. Maybe there is a general misconception that because everyone sleeps, we are all experts in sleep.
Another big problem is that sleep issues are very common, yet services available to treat sleep disorders are very sparse. This unmet need results in people looking elsewhere for support and coming across advice from non-experts which at best may be unhelpful, and at worst may be harmful.
Do you think public engagement with science and data has changed in recent years?
Science, and its communication, has clearly become more politicised by some in pursuit of their own agendas.
What is happening in the US at the moment is remarkable, with a hugely successful federal research machinery built up over decades being dismantled by those pushing ideology-driven pseudoscience.
There is a real risk that the true value that science brings to society is not recognised because it is taken so much for granted, and we will only notice and value it when it has been damaged.
For example, we have not needed to think much about deadly infectious diseases such as small pox, polio and measles for decades because of the huge success of vaccines, but because of that equally we may have taken those vaccines for granted and do not, as a society, have good awareness of what life was like before vaccines were available.
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