The Science of Sleeping

Also known as night terrors, these episodes are often paired with other prarsomnias, such as sleepwalking. A Parasomnia is an undesired occurrence during sleep, such as sleep talking, sleep walking, and night terrors. During these sleep terror episodes, an individual might kick and thrash around while still unconscious, stare wide eyed, scream or shout, and so on. Night terrors are said to be able to occur for a period of up to 30 minutes, once about that much time has passed, the person will once again lye down and go to sleep. Once the next day comes around the corner, usually the child or adult will not have any recollection of the event, but they at times remember small fragments of the

In summary, evolution theory proposed that sleep is adaptive and animals which are in the higher level of the food chain or with higher metabolic rate need more sleep. When it comes to the cause of sleep, everyone has an internal body clock which calls circadian rhythms to control when you are awake and when your body is ready for sleep. The circadian rhythm is typically 24-hour repeating and there are two processes interact to control it. The first is a pressure of sleep, which controlled by adenosine, that builds with every hour when you are awake.

The skirmish between traditional aristocracies and new democracies in Sicily was damaging to the Sicilian people, particularly people who were from conservative family backgrounds. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa portrays the battle of old vs. new through following the life of an old Sicilian aristocrat, Don Fabrizio, commonly known as The Prince. Giuseppe uses The Prince to highlight the outmoded side of Sicily and the struggle to deal with the Risorgimento (Italian unification). Although many people during this time were accepting change, The Prince tried to ignore the change which is portrayed through the motif of sleep.

The first example the author uses is a young adult name Randy Gardner. For a science project, he has deprived himself of sleep for 11 days in a row. A scientist named William Dement kept track of Randy’s brain function during the course of the experiment. Early on in the experiment, his symptoms included: forgetfulness, nausea and irritability. After sleep deprivation for five days he was experiencing paranoia, symptoms of Alzheimer’s and severe disorientation. During the last few days he was experiencing trembling fingers, slurred speech and a loss of motor function.

The two most common causes of sleep disorder is central and obstructive sleep apnea. Central sleep apnea is when our breathing is interrupted throughout the night because your brain fails to signal the muscles to breathe. Obstructive sleep apnea occurs with blocked airways and your struggle to breathe triggers coughing or snoring – in actuality your body is grasping for air.

An abundance of research has been generated on sleep and why it occurs, with results suggesting that dreaming may partially explain the phenomenon. Though results have failed to discover the primary function of sleep, they have unveiled dreaming as a secondary function, which despite not being fundamental for survival possesses a great deal of utility nonetheless. While the primary function of dreaming, much like the primary function of sleep, remains ambiguous; a number of theories and empirical studies have proposed secondary functions relevant to waking life. The threat simulation theory, for example, postulates that dreaming serves an evolutionary function, thought to have heightened survival and reproductive success in the Pleistocene era. The theory purports that dreaming allows for an endogenous simulation of potential threats, which rehearses the cognitive mechanisms necessary for threat perception and avoidance in reality (Valli, Revonsuo, Pälkäs, Ismail, Ali, & Punamäki, 2005; Arnulf, Grosliere, Le Corve, Golmard, Lascols & Duguet, 2014). Additionally, the continuity theory posits that dreams mirror waking life experiences, thus serving a predictive function. In accordance to this theory, dream imagery can be used to predict wellbeing, and diagnose depression and anxiety (Miller, DeCicco, Fox, & McCourt, 2015; DeCicco, Lyons, Pannier, Wright, & Clarke, 2010; Michels, Schilling, Rausch, Eifler, Zink, Meyer-Lindenberg, & Schredl, 2014). Lastly, dreams have a

This investigation examines is it possible for light pulses to alter the motor skills, and cardiac movements of biological life forms. Is it possible to change how biological lifeforms functions if we were to shine a light on them every hour at night? Knowing how most animals work, and from that of human experience I can say that light is what makes us stay awake; therefore if we have a light shined on us every hour would we lose sleep? These are the type of questions I will be answering throughout my extended essay. I will talk about how our sleep is affected by light, and monitor this so I can then record the data. I will also be discussing why we sleep. Which you may be wondering how this ties into light, however light does damage our skin

Although scientists are unsure why we sleep, they do know how sleep works. There are two phases of sleep: Rapid Eye Movement (REM sleep), and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM sleep). These phases help form whole sleep cycles, and a complete cycle lasts around ninety to a hundred ten minutes. If you sleep for eight hours, you will go through about five cycles every night. During these cycles, you are mostly in NREM sleep. REM sleep only lasts for about ten minutes of the cycle. However, as the night progresses, NREM sleep decreases and REM sleep increases. Every cycle of sleep has five stages. In stage one, you will get NREM sleep. You begin to lose muscle tone, which causes twitches and hypnic jerks. You also have hypnagogic hallucinations and

Out of the four main sleep theories, I believe cognitive development best relates to the events of today, and the medical procedure Joel received. I believe cognitive development relates well to the events of today because as said by G. William Domhoff (2014) “dreams dramatize our wishes, fears, concerns, and interest in striking scenarios that we experience as real events.” If you take a look at the categories of dream content Domhoff states, you realize most of your dreams you have had before fall into one or more of those categories. If you were to think back you could probably recall waking up after having a nightmare upset and with a racing heart. This is because dreams are so dramatically real like Domhoof states, and this explains why

This paper examines five different sources of information that addresses information pertaining to wakeful resting or sleeping and the effects it has on memory garnered by experiments performed on humans and animals. Wakeful resting is defined as an individual that has not fallen asleep but has engaged in a period of rest that cuts them off from the distractions of the outside world. Sleep is the bodies natural cycle of rest that suspends the consciousness and allows both the body and the mind to take a break from any stressful activities and recover. By either taking a short wakeful rest or going to sleep after learning new material, memory consolidation in both humans and animals will be improved, and it is not limited to humans that

This is a short article written by a collaboration of people by a company named Today’s Science. Their main goal was to describe the pattern of sleep a human goes through during the night. This cycle is called NREM and REM, non-rapid eye movement and rapid eye movement. They mostly describe what happens during sleep because without sleeping you could not dream. Dreaming occurs during the rapid eye movement cyc

The stages of non-REM sleep, stages 1–3, are defined by EEG activity. Slow-wave sleep in stage 3 is the deepest stage of sleep. Alertness consists of desynchronized beta activity (13–30 Hz); relaxation and drowsiness consist of alpha activity (8–12 Hz); stage 1 sleep consists of alternating periods of alpha activity, irregular fast activity, and theta activity (3.5–7.5 Hz); the EEG of stage 2 sleep lacks alpha activity but contains sleep spindles (short periods of 12–14 Hz activity) and occasional K complexes; stage 3 sleep primarily consists of delta activity. About 90 minutes after the beginning of sleep, people enter REM sleep. Thereafter, cycles of REM and non-REM sleep occur in periods of approximately 90 minutes. Muscle tone decreases throughout the stages, resulting in deepest relaxation and paralysis in REM sleep (Carlson & Birkett, p. 268).

There are two types of sleep: non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep, which is divided into four stages and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. A sleep episode begins with a short period of four NREM stages and finally goes to REM. However, individuals don’t remain in REM sleep for the whole night sleep; it will loop between stages of NREM and REM throughout the night. The function of alternations between these two types of sleep is not yet understood, but irregular cycling and absent sleep stages are associated with sleep disorders. (1) Sleep patterns change continuously and considerably with age. The general trend is that sleep efficiency decline with age. Newborns sleep about 16 to 18 hours per day, young children (age 2- age 5) from 11 to 13 hours, adolescents from 8 to 10 hours, adults from 7-9 hours and elderly people are more complicated because of individuals’ health status, age, gender, work, and emotion. (What Happens to Your Body When You Don’t Get Enough Sleep). Every report has a different range of sleeping hours because some people have jobs at midnight, and they cannot sleep at night. Many parents don’t get seven or eight hours sleep because they need to feed their children or change the diaper when their children need it. Many people don’t really know how many hours they need to sleep for a night because they are busy with their jobs and always work

Many biotic scientists believe that sleep is a positive role, which is necessary for human's life. It has been shown that there are four sleep stages basics, and a dreamer has to have an NREM sleep which is before the REM sleep. Shafton (1995) states that when a person lay to sleep, they enter sleep onset or stage one by closing their eyes, but their eyes still have uncoordinated movements (SEMs). After a short time, they move to the next stages, which are two, three, to four sleep stage, and that takes ninety minutes to complete a sleep cycle. He also explains that during sleep stages two to four, the eye movements are absent, which is known as NREM sleep. In 1953, the REM was found by Aserinsky and Kleitman, which they explained it as a rapid

First thing’s first. What is language acquisition? Well the term refers to the process humans take to develop and attain a form of communication.