The Mystery of Sleep Essay - 2764 Words

The Mystery of Sleep ~ Rest for the body, Activity for the brain ~ Everyone sleeps. While humans sleep, they do not procreate, protect, or nurture their young, gather food, earn money, write papers, etc. Surely, at least once, most people have wondered why they sleep in spite of these disadvantages. According to Greier (48), it is hard for scientists to answer the seemingly simple question of what, exactly, sleep is good for. Sleep occupies one-third of humans lives, which seems like a waste of precious time; however, no one can survive without sleep. According to Shelton (5), sleepy drivers in the U.S. cause approximately 56,000 car accidents every year. Also, Wolfson and Carskadon (875) report interestingly that the students who†¦show more content†¦Stages 3 and 4 make up the deep slow-wave sleep. Stage 3 is called moderately deep sleep and Stage 4 is called very deep sleep (31). NREM sleep represents three-fourths of a period of typical sleep, and the remaining time is occupied with REM sleep, which can be detected with electrodes placed on the skin around the eyes so that tiny electrical discharges from contractions of the eye muscles are transmitted to recording equipment (31). REM sleep periods, lasting from a few minutes to half an hour, alternate with NREM periods. Dreaming occurs during REM time. Individual sleep patterns normally change throughout life from all day sleep in infancy to as little as six hours a day in old age (Rechtschaffen 359). Infants tend to begin a sleep period with REM sleep, whereas REM activity usually is inserted in the four stages of NREM sleep in adults (359). Since the beginning of the 1920s, in which sleep research began, several theories have been offered to try to explain why humans sleep; however, these theories are not conclusive because there are pros and cons to each theory. The history of sleep theories first focused on the rest aspect because the body appeared to be recuperating from tiredness. Researchers tried to resolve this mystery by comparing awake humans with sleeping humans, and investigating the tangible phenomena of sleep. The only problem with this rest theory was that the brain was NOT resting during sleep.Show MoreRelatedWhy We Sleep- The Pending Mystery 731 Words   |  3 Pagesinto the field of sleep research. However, these discoveries are still far from being complete. Considering that an individual spends about one-third of their life sleeping, there is much more that still needs to be discovered concerning this topic. General Information Sleep is basically a state of physical inactivity and mental rest in which conscious awareness, thoughts, and voluntary movements do not occur. During sleep, irregular and unpredictable dreaming also takes place. 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