Greeting
Mitsuo HAYASHI
President, the 49th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Sleep Research
Welcome to the 49th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Sleep Research!
We are pleased to announce that the 49th Annual Meeting of the Japan Society of Sleep Research will be held on June 28 (Saturday) and June 29 (Sunday), 2025, at the Kasumi Campus of Hiroshima University (Hiroshima City). This will be the first time in a quarter of a century that the meeting is held in Hiroshima, since the late Tadao Hori, Professor Emeritus at Hiroshima University, hosted the 24th Annual Meeting in 1999. At that time, the Japanese Society of Sleep Research had just over 600 members, but now the membership has exceeded 4,000, and it is truly remarkable to see how widely sleep science has become recognized.
Somnology is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses a wide range of academic areas, from natural sciences to social sciences and the humanities. It includes sleep science, which aims to uncover the mechanisms of sleep; sleep medicine, dentistry, and pharmacology, which are involved in the prevention and treatment of sleep disorders; and sleep sociology, which addresses various issues related to sleep in daily life. The Japanese Society of Sleep Research has followed this interdisciplinary tradition since its founding, encouraging members to engage in discussions beyond their specific fields, share new insights, and build a collaborative framework for interdisciplinary cooperation. In 2002, the Science Council of Japan proposed that sleep science be recognized as a new academic field, describing it as a "broad and interdisciplinary science encompassing all research domains related to sleep."
However, as is often the case in any academic society, an increase in membership tends to lead not to "interdisciplinarity" but rather to "specialized fragmentation." While specialization is essential for the deepening of academic fields, as highlighted by the Science Council of Japan, the development of Somnology as a "broad and interdisciplinary science encompassing all research domains" requires not only specialization but also a continued focus on promoting interdisciplinarity.
"Integrative science" refers to academic and educational research that seeks to comprehensively understand and address complex issues by integrating multiple fields of study and adopting a broad perspective. The concept of "broad interdisciplinary science," as proposed by the Science Council of Japan, is essentially synonymous with this idea of integrative science. In this spirit, we have chosen the theme for the 49th Annual Meeting to be "Somnology as Integrative Science," aiming to build a new framework for Somnology that transcends the boundaries of individual disciplines.
In recent years, public interest in sleep has been increasing, leading to the emergence of a new field known as sleep healthcare. This Annual Meeting aims to serve as a platform for advancing " Somnology as Integrative Science " by incorporating the latest findings, technologies, and perspectives into the knowledge that has been established in the field of sleep Somnology thus far.