 He emigrated to Canada in 1968, where he became a professor of physiology at Université Laval in Quebec, a position he held for the rest of his life.He is the father of linguist, Donca Steriade.While at Laval University, he discovered that the slow oscillations of NREM sleep arise when groups of neurons fire together for a little while (so-called "on periods"), then fall silent for about a fraction of a second ("off periods"), and then resume their synchronized firing.