The Clinical Physiology Series strives to provide timely summaries of basic physiological research as it bears on clinically relevant topics. Considerable data obtained across different levels of behavioral arousal and sleep illustrate the undeniable clinical importance of efforts to understand the cellular mechanisms that cause state-dependent changes in physiology. First, it is an established fact that neuronal mechanisms regulating sleep and wakefulness significantly alter cardiovascular, respiratory, thermoregulatory control. Second, temporal studies have established correlations between time of day, time of certain pathophysiological events, and time of death. Third, occupational health and safety are known to be adversely affected by decreased levels of arousal that occur at predictable times of day. The alternation of waking and sleeping, the daily course of the advancing and receding tides of consciousness, has long been a familiar part of our experience. But it is a new idea that autonomic and respiratory physiology are equally and dramatically altered in a parallel fashion. It is this concept that is summarized, explored, and developed in this much needed book. Clinical Physiology of Sleep is the first book to systematically discuss the role of the autonomic and respiratory systems in the sleep process while blending phenomenological description with cellular mechanisms and clinical correlations. The central concept is the relationship of general physiological alterations during sleep to cellular physiology and to the pathology of sleep. The editors have drawn together thematically related chapters written by experts in this rapidly growing field. The book is sure to find an important place in the library of sleep researchers, respiratory and cardiovascular physiologists, neuroscientists, anesthesiologists, and clinicians concerned with sleep disorders.