Sleep
Circadian rhythms regulate many aspects of our daily life. They influence when we get hungry, when we need to use the bathroom, and when our internal temperature goes up or down. New research suggests they even influence your susceptibility to disease (Edgar et al., 2016). There are “clocks” in each and every cell in your body, but the master clock is found in the suprachiasmatic nucleus in your hypothalamus, and this is synchronized to external factors, the most important being light. The most obvious of these rhythms, and the one that you will focus on this week, is sleep.
Sleep is a universal phenomenon. Research suggests that most adults need about 7–9 hours of sleep per night to be fully rested and functional (National Sleep Foundation, 2015), although studies suggest that the average adult gets about 6.5 or fewer hours of sleep per night (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2014). Despite this universal need for sleep, we do not really know why we sleep. There are many theories, ranging from REM sleep playing a key role in shaking the fluid inside your eyeballs in order to deliver oxygen to the cells of your eye, helping with memory, and washing cellular debris out of your brain. This question of why we sleep has received a significant amount of research attention. One form of this is the 2015 Flame Challenge, coordinated by Alan Alda and Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. In this, scientists are challenged to answer the question “What is sleep?” in a way that can be understood by an 11 year old. While we may not understand as much as we would like about sleep, what we do know is that sleep is governed largely by genetic factors, and is “hard wired” into your brain.
In this week’s Assignment, you will first analyze and describe the stages of sleep and then discuss the theories of why we sleep.
To prepare for this Assignment:
- Review Chapter 15 in Brain and Behavior, paying attention to stages of sleep and the brain regions associated with the promotion of sleep.
- Locate a recent peer-reviewed article from the Walden Library, published within the past 5 years, that applies to the biological basis of sleep.
The Assignment (4–5 pages):
- Describe the three stages of non-REM sleep and compare non-REM sleep with REM sleep. As part of your response, include the behaviors and patterns of brain activity that characterize each stage of sleep.
- Explain the role of different brain regions and neurotransmitters on promoting sleep and wakefulness.
- Finally, find and summarize a recent (published within the last 5 years) peer-reviewed article from the Walden Library about the biological basis of sleep. The article should be about research to understand how genes influence sleep, the brain regions or neurotransmitters associated with sleep, or the fundamental purpose of why we sleep. Summarize the article in enough detail that your reader will understand what was done in the study and what the results of the study were (similar to the articles you found in BioPsychology.com in the first week).
- Then, apply the findings of your research to one of the sleep disorders described in Chapter 15 by either proposing a new hypothesis about the cause of one of the disorders or by explaining a new treatment for one of these disorders.
Sources to be used:
http://www.pnas.org/content/11
https://sleepfoundation.org/pr
https://aasm.org/blog/?id=5233
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p
Please provide thorough detailed information.
Answer preview
Sleep is an entirely natural state of mind that occurs on a specific cycle in a human’s life through inhibited sensory activity, altered consciousness, and the inhibition of almost all muscles in the body. Sleep can mainly happen through the REM sleep or the non-REM sleep patterns. Rest is essential for the body as the body’s vital processes like maintaining memory, cognitive function, and keeping mood remain through the restoration of the nervous, immune, muscle systems, and skeletal systems. Sleep is closely monitored by the circadian clock that assists in telling the brain the difference between day and night…
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