Sleep Disorders and Medicine

Biography

Dr. Hall’s research bridges two traditionally independent fields, biobehavioral medicine and sleep medicine. Biobehavioral medicine research has made important discoveries regarding the pathways through which psychological, social and environmental factors influence health and functioning. Yet, until recently, this research has focused almost exclusively on factors measured during wakefulness. Similarly, sleep research has not systematically considered the influence of psychosocial or environmental factors on normal sleep or on the pathogenesis and clinical course of primary sleep disorders. Dr. Hall’s biobehavioral sleep medicine research program integrates theoretical concepts and methods from both fields in order to address fundamental questions about the pathways through which psychological and social factors affect sleep and their downstream consequences to health and functioning, with an emphasis on cardiometabolic disease risk. She has evaluated these relationships in diverse populations including healthy and depressed children, adolescents, adults, and elders; caregiver populations; health care workers; women during the menopausal transition; adults with bereavement-related depression; and veterans. Dr. Hall has used an array of study designs including experimental laboratory studies; cross-sectional and longitudinal naturalistic studies; and, most recently, intervention research, with a focus on modeling causal mechanisms. During the course of this research, she has developed innovative methods for enhancing the ecological validity and reliability of sleep studies and the assessment of nocturnal physiology during sleep. She is an internationally-recognized expert on the stress-sleep relationship and the use of heart rate variability as a continuous and non-invasive tool for assessing autonomic tone during sleep and in relation to health and functioning. Currently, Dr. Hall’s two main projects are focused on (1) sleep’s role in the prospective link between major depression and cardiovascular disease, and (2) the impact of psychological stress on the neurobiology of insomnia. She is a widely-sought mentor and educator. A member of the graduate training faculty in the School of Medicine and the Department of Psychology, Dr. Hall has trained and mentored undergraduate, graduate and medical students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty in diverse components of clinical and translational sleep medicine, with an emphasis on the sleep-health relationship.

Research Interest

sleep disorders,insomnia,pediatric sleep medicine