John Peever is a Professor in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto. He completed his PhD in neurobiology in the Department of Physiology at the University of Toronto in 2001 and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA in 2004. His research examines how and why we sleep, with a particular focus on identifying the brain mechanisms that control rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and how their dysfunction underlies narcolepsy and REM sleep behavior disorder. Peever is also an advocate for promoting the awareness of sleep in health and disease through his roles as Vice President of the Canadian Sleep Society and Chair of the National Training Program in Sleep Medicine and Biology. Outside of science, he is a husband to David LeRoy, dog dad, hobby farmer, beekeeper, horseman, and antique admirer.
What turned you on to biology in the first place?
My interest in brain biology started when I was six. I have an incredibly vivid memory of my first visit to the school library and picking up a book entitled The Brain. I took it home and read it cover to cover. I recall saying to my parents — although they don’t recall this — that I wanted to be a brain surgeon. Initially, I thought that I’d be a neurologist. So, I decided to go to university and streamed into pre-medical school courses. But as time moved on, I realized that I was petrified of hospitals. So, I abandoned my initial dream of being a neurologist. But I wondered: how could l study the brain but not be a medical doctor? Then I started taking basic biology and neuroscience courses and was slowly introduced to basic research. Eventually, I realized that I could study the brain at a research level. The rest is history.
And what drew you to your specific field of research?
I’m not sure, but I’ve always been fascinated by sleep. My earliest memory about sleep is from when I was 10. I recall lying in bed thinking “where do I go when I sleep?”, “why do I wake up in the morning?”, and “why do I dream about flying so much?” I didn’t think much about sleep again until I was an undergraduate student, when I started experiencing sleep paralysis. I’d wake up after a bad dream but be unable to move or speak even though I wanted to. These terrifying experiences sparked my interest in sleep biology. I started reading about sleep and more specifically REM sleep because sleep paralysis arises from dreaming sleep. Given that there was no internet at this point, I had to skulk the library stacks for information. I quickly came across the seminal work of Allan Hobson, William Dement, and Michel Jouvet, who were studying REM sleep. Their work was fascinating, but what really got me hooked was how little we know about how and why we experience REM sleep.
If you had to choose a different field of biology, what would it be?
That’s a tough question to answer because so many things fascinate me. But if I could do a ‘180’, I’d probably study the biology of aging. I find it fascinating how obsessed we are with age and aging. We devote — sadly — so much of our waking lives to worrying about it. Just look at how many books and movies are devoted to the subject. I lived in Los Angeles during the rise of plastic surgery and was fascinated to see how people would literally carve up their faces just to look a few years younger. I’d love to figure out how and why we age. Wouldn’t it be amazing to discover the fountain of youth, that magic elixir that stops aging dead in its tracks?
What makes a great scientist?
Some people might think that it’s intelligence, but I think that it’s curiosity. We often confuse the two. All the great minds in science seem to be insatiably curious. Albert Einstein said it best: “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Curiosity is the fuel that flames inquiry and scientific discovery. Another quality a scientist needs is open-mindedness. In science there’s often the urge to develop an idea and then prove it’s correct, but we need to realize that our ideas might be — and often are — wrong. I frequently say to my research team that “it’s OK to sleep with a hypothesis but never marry one.” What I’m trying to say here is to keep an open mind and be flexible. Another quality that is required in science is self-doubt or self-awareness. Scientists often trick themselves into seeing their data in a singular way. The great American physicist Richard Feynman said it best: “The first principle [in science] is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Who were your key influencers?
My parents and scientific mentors. Each of them had an enormous impact on my life, career, and science. My parents, Ron and Elizabeth Peever, taught me the importance of hard work and honesty. Richard Stephenson, my MSc advisor, taught me the value of skepticism in science, and that going against the grain is what fuels progress. James Duffin and Richard Horner were my PhD mentors and they taught me the importance of scientific rigor and that procrastination is dangerous. Jerry Siegel, my postdoctoral advisor, taught me to think outside the box and to be persistent. But the one thing that they all taught me was the incredible importance of mentorship itself! Scientific mentors are ultimately the basic unit of science because they are responsible for producing the next generation of scientists.
Do you have a scientific hero?
Yes, mine is the Spanish neuroscientist, Santiago Ramón y Cajal. He’s my hero for two reasons. First and foremost, he pioneered the field of neuroscience by showing that the nervous system is made up of billions of ‘individual’ nerve cells. While this may sound trivial in 2020, his idea was revolutionary at that point in history because most anatomists believed that the nervous system was a single continuous structure. And the other reason that I admire Cajal is that he was tenacious. Even though his peers disagreed with his ideas, Cajal believed in himself and his science. In 1906, when he and Camillo Golgi jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Cajal gave a lecture that completely contradicted Golgi’s view on the structure of the brain. Cajal fought for his idea that individual cells are the basic unit of the brain. And in the end, he came out on top. His work represents one of the founding principles of modern neuroscience.
What is the next big question in your field?
I don’t think that there’s one ‘big question’ in sleep biology. There are many little ones, and by piecing them together we’ll start solving the mystery of why we sleep. So, what are these smaller questions? The first two are: do all animals actually sleep and does sleep serve the same function in all animals? I often hear people say that “sleep is a universal behavior” or “all animals sleep,”but there’s marginal evidence for these statements because we’ve only studied sleep behavior in a fraction of existing animals. Understanding sleep across species will provide new clues about the functions of sleep itself. Another pressing question in the field relates to the link between sleep and disease. Evidence indicates that poor or abnormal sleep leads to certain types of degenerative diseases, such as dementia. A major challenge therefore for sleep biologists is to better understand how and why poor sleep triggers degenerative changes in the brain. Answering this question will shed light on the origins and mechanisms of degenerative disorders themselves.
This article was originally published in Current Biology. Read the original article.