Our Facility

The University of Rochester Sleep & Neurophysiology Research Laboratory is located on the basement level of the Psychiatry Department. The location within the Medical Center provides easy access to medical personnel, biomedical engineering, clinical laboratories (e.g., Human Clinical Chemistries Laboratory), and other research laboratories (e.g., Neuroimaging Laboratory, Psychoneuroendocrine Laboratory, etc.).

The lab includes a hotel-like suite, four offices, a conference room, and a physical exam room.

Our Suite

The suite includes:

• A control room
• Four bedrooms
• Two full baths
• A kitchenette
• A living/dining room
• A laundry room

Control Room

The control room contains:

• Electrophysiologic equipment
• Four computers dedicated to acquisition of PSG data
• Two computers dedicated to off-line data processing (sleep scoring, PSA, and statistical analysis)
• A 1-terabit data server that is utilized in the collection of data, as well as containing a substantial archive of articles and reference material

Bedrooms

Two of the bedrooms are RF shielded and two of the bedrooms have sound-insulated catheter portals (for studies that require blood sampling or for the infusion of radiopharmaceuticals for imaging studies).

The bedrooms are connected via intercoms to the control room and can be monitored via infrared video. The laboratory can also implement cognitive neuroscience and medical protocols. In addition to routine polysomnographic assessment, the lab is set up to acquire a broad range of electrophysiologic signals (i.e., EEG, EMG, EOG, EKG, EGG, GSR) and to undertake a variety of signal-processing techniques (e.g., PSA, DPA, ERPs).

Computers

Twenty-one computers support day-to-day operations (11 Dell desktops, 4 Dell laptops, 2 Red Barn Computers, 1 Red Barn data server, 1 web server). Two PCs are used for sleep scoring and four for data acquisition. The data server built by Red Barn Technology Group features dual 1.5Gz Opteron processors, 2 GB of 2700 ECC DDR RAM, complimented by 5 SATA 250Gb 72,000rpm hard drives in a 5-level RAID configuration, giving the server 1 terabyte of usable storage that automatically backs up its data within the RAID array, all powered by redundant 400-watt power supplies.

Major Equipment

• Three Embla N7000 sleep diagnostic systems and RemLogic 1.1 software
• One 18-channel Grass Model 8 electroencephalographs (bench mounted) with Stellate Harmonie Luna/Sensa software
• Four intercom systems
• Four infrared video systems
• 32 MiniMitter actigraphs, interface and software