AccScience Publishing / NSCE / Volume 2 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.36922/NSCE025520019
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REVIEW ARTICLE

The dynamical models of sleep: A brief review 

Adriano Scibilia1* ,  Luigi Fortuna2
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1 1 Institute of Intelligent Industrial Systems and Technologies for Advanced Manufacturing, National Research Council, Milan, Lombardy, Italy
2 2 Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Palermo, Palermo, Italy
NSCE 2026, 2(1), 025520019 https://doi.org/10.36922/NSCE025520019
Received: 23 December 2025 | Revised: 2 March 2026 | Accepted: 10 March 2026 | Published online: 24 April 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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Abstract

The field of sleep dynamics is a fascinating and complex area of research. The topic of sleep has attracted widespread interest over the last century. The aim of this concise review is to provide some essential items for researchers interested in both nonlinear science and sleep engineering. In particular, the paper focuses on the dynamical modeling of sleep, highlighting the fundamental mechanisms underlying sleep–wake regulation. A brief literature review is presented, and some fundamental mathematical models of sleep are reported with numerical simulations. This review introduces the reader to the fascinating topic of sleep dynamics, underlining its universality and complexity, and stimulates further research in the field.

Keywords
Sleep dynamics
Nonlinear systems
Circadian rhythms
Homeostatic regulation
Chaos theory
Complex systems
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
Luigi Fortuna is the Honorary Editor-in-Chief of this journal, but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. Separately, other authors declared that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.
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