{"id":31479,"date":"2025-07-10T15:20:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=31479"},"modified":"2025-07-10T15:28:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:28:18","slug":"james-b-maas-guru-of-slumber-is-dead-at-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=31479","title":{"rendered":"James B. Maas, Guru of Slumber, Is Dead at 86"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An author and a professor, he taught a popular and entertaining psychology course at Cornell that focused on the importance of sleep, including \u201cpower naps.\u201d<\/p>\n

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James B. Maas, a social psychologist who in books and lectures was an evangelist for the many health benefits of a good night\u2019s sleep \u2014 or even a short power nap at work \u2014 died on June 23 in Charlevoix, Mich. He was 86.<\/p>\n

His wife, Nancy Neaher Maas, said he died of heart failure in their summer home. Their primary residence was in Frisco, Texas.<\/p>\n

Professor Maas taught an introductory psychology course at Cornell University each fall for nearly 50 years. It became so popular that it had to be moved from a lecture hall to an auditorium that could seat more than 1,000 students.<\/p>\n

In 1969, five years after starting the course, he said that he began to add the findings of sleep research \u2014 mostly done by others \u2014 to his course. He had been inspired to explore the psychology and dynamics of sleep while making a film about the psychiatry professor Dr. William Dement,<\/a> a pioneering sleep researcher at Stanford University; Professor Maas was riveted by one student\u2019s recollection of a pre-dawn dream during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI was so fascinated by watching this one episode that I said to myself by the time morning came, \u2018I\u2019m going to spend the rest of my professional life studying sleep,\u2019\u201d he said on a 2017 GDA Speakers podcast<\/a>. \u201cI was just trying to make a short film for my class, because sleep is a soporific topic, and I\u2019m talking to very tired kids. So I wanted to jazz it up a bit by showing a film, and that one night changed my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Maas surveyed his students about their sleep habits, and he devoted part of each semester to what happens during sleep, how sleep affects people and why so many don\u2019t get enough of it. In his view, sleep was as critical as nutrition and exercise.<\/p>\n

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An author and a professor, he taught a popular and entertaining psychology course at Cornell that focused on the importance of sleep, including \u201cpower naps.\u201dJames B. Maas, a social psychologist who in books and lectures was an evangelist for the many health benefits of a good night\u2019s sleep \u2014 or even a short power nap at work \u2014 died on June 23 in Charlevoix, Mich. He was 86.His wife, Nancy Neaher Maas, said he died of heart failure in their summer home. Their primary residence was in Frisco, Texas.Professor Maas taught an introductory psychology course at Cornell University each fall for nearly 50 years. It became so popular that it had to be moved from a lecture hall to an auditorium that could seat more than 1,000 students.In 1969, five years after starting the course, he said that he began to add the findings of sleep research \u2014 mostly done by others \u2014 to his course. He had been inspired to explore the psychology and dynamics of sleep while making a film about the psychiatry professor Dr. William Dement, a pioneering sleep researcher at Stanford University; Professor Maas was riveted by one student\u2019s recollection of a pre-dawn dream during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.\u201cI was so fascinated by watching this one episode that I said to myself by the time morning came, \u2018I\u2019m going to spend the rest of my professional life studying sleep,\u2019\u201d he said on a 2017 GDA Speakers podcast. \u201cI was just trying to make a short film for my class, because sleep is a soporific topic, and I\u2019m talking to very tired kids. So I wanted to jazz it up a bit by showing a film, and that one night changed my life.\u201dProfessor Maas surveyed his students about their sleep habits, and he devoted part of each semester to what happens during sleep, how sleep affects people and why so many don\u2019t get enough of it. In his view, sleep was as critical as nutrition and exercise.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31481,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31482,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31479\/revisions\/31482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}