Activation Synthesis Theory Of Sleep

Sleep is a huge part of our lives. On average, we need anywhere from 7-10 of sleep, depending on age. However, few people, especially students, actually get the amount of sleep they should be receiving every night. You might be wondering, its only a couple of hours, why is this a big deal? Actually, sleep deprivation can have a huge impact on your day. According to the article “The Cure for Brain Fog” by Toni Gerber Hope, “lack of sleep has such a profound effect on our brains, making us forgetful, unable to concentrate, grumpy, accident-prone or clumsy”. Anyone who has lost sleep has felt these symptoms and they occur even slightly if one gets less sleep than necessary. There are many diagnoses for sleep deprivation but I believe that the rising issue is technology.

There is a question that has baffled many psychologists and curious minds for centuries the question is why do we dream? Do we dream to save our mind from insanity and stress or is it because it’s a natural process? There is one thing for certain though most people dream, the question is can they remember it. The truth is all creatures can enter a certain type of REM sleep but it’s uncertain if they experience dreams on a human plane of thought. When we enter REM sleep our Rapid Eye Movement stage of sleep the deepest part of our sleep, the human body undergoes a temporary paralysis to stop the sleeping person from potential harmful movement. The dreaming process usually happens in this stage, but has been reported in NREM sleep.

This essay focuses on evaluating three functions of sleep. These functions include mental health (Jackowska et al, 2011), cardiovascular disease (Kronholm et al, 2011) and memory (Hu et al, 2006). The key aspects are explained in detail with regards to studies. The findings from the studies will help justify the function and it’s involvement with sleep. Sleep is important for an individual’s well being, survival, brain development, emotional regulation, cognitive function, memory, and in order to protect mental and cardiovascular health. An individual should sleep for 6-8 hours. A recent suggestion by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommended that an individual should sleep for minimum 7 hours. The quality of sleep is significant to maintain healthy brain functions. Evidence, indicating that good sleep quality is essential for mood and health then duration (Chandola et al, 2010). The researches implied will enable the understanding of the functions of sleep and evaluate the evidence of each of the functions, including advantages and limitations. Furthermore ethical issues are discussed, and an overall summary of the essay is briefed.

Everyone needs sleep and it will make a day go smoothly or completely ruin someone’s rest of the day. Every human, animal, and most insects require a sufficient amount of sleep to function normally thought-out their day and night. On average humans need about seven to ten hours of sleep, as a normal requirement for the brain to recover conventionally. However, 40-50 percent of Americans do not get enough sleep every night (Information on Insomnia, n.d.). Lack of time or stressful living schedule may hinder there sleeping time. Others may have a disorder that causes them to have horrible sleep experiences and not being able to sleep.

In the book Introduction to Psychology by Plotnick, and Kouyoumdjian, there were many topics I read about that were interesting, but module 7 was the one that cute my attention. The module is about dreams. According to the definition in the book dreaming is a unique state of consciousness in which we are asleep, but experience a variety of astonishing visual, auditory and tactile images, often connected in strange ways and often in color. People blind from birth has only auditory or tactile dreams. Sleep and dreams play important roles in human life. Sleep is divided into two major categories called non-Rem and REM. According we spend 80percent of our sleep time. Sleep consists of five different stages. I will be discussing three of the stages.

To begin with, Hobson and McCarley (1977) discussed dreaming as a mental experience acompanied by vividly hallucinoid imagery and occurs when the brain is activated during REM sleep. During this cycle, the brain starts to differentiate original blocks of information, stored memories and ultimately fuses them,

Scientists are trying to figure out what triggers sleep, and how much the brain can remember when you are sleeping. In the Current Biology journal, a recent study states that the brain processes complex stimuli while sleeping and keeps information until the decisions are made when awake. The scientists asked a group a people to categorize sounds, whether the sounds were objects or animals, using the left or right responses, they did this until the group fell asleep, then the scientists choose new words. When the group was awaken, they were tested to see if they knew any of the sounds after they fell asleep. The test results showed that the people could not remember the new sounds that were made after they fell asleep. There was a second experiment done, to find the zones in the brain that trigger sleep. The results concluded that it could be in more places, but right now, sleep is mostly triggered in the frontal cortex, cerebral hemispheres, that send messages from the cerebral cortex. Destruction to the frontal cortex, could cause

One of the most fascinating natural occurrences known to science is something everyone's body requires them to do, this strange phenomenon is sleep. Sleep is not fully understood by anyone, there are too many variables and unanswered questions to discover what sleep is for and why the human body stresses sleeping so much. Dreams are just as undiscovered as sleep. There are many observations made about dreams and what parts of the brain are utilized during these inter-sleep hallucinations. But like sleep, there is no official reason or meaning behind it. Sleep and dreams, although strange and without apparent purpose, reveal many things about an individual, his or her habits, and potentially innermost subconscious thoughts.

When the brain first encounters an idea, thought, image, experience, or action it works to form or encode a memory. There are many different kinds of memories that can be formed. Each must be consolidated in order to remain a stable memory. All five stages of sleep support some phase of learning and memory (Poe, Walsh, & Bjorness, 2010). This article discusses the different types of memory, stages of sleep, and what occurs that potentially strengthens memory while sleeping.

A dream is a progression of pictures, thoughts, sentiments, and occurrences that transpire unintentionally during particular sleep phases. Scientists and researchers have examined sleeping and dreaming extensively to provide an understanding of these processes. This examination, specifically of dreaming, has imparted theories on the meaning or interpretation of dreams.

Sleep is needed for the body to repair and replenish damaged cells due to stress and ultraviolet rays, to trigger hormones that regulate mood, energy and mental acuity, and for the mind to restore alertness and memory. Adequate sleep is also necessary for the immune system to fight infections, support sugar metabolism, perform productively at work or school and maintain healthy relationships. Good sleep is not a luxury, although it has often become so in our 24/7 lifestyles; rather, it is an essential requirement for well-being, optimal functioning, and quality of life.

Dreams are a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. Everyone dreams, whether they remember it or not. The real question is why some people remember their dreams and others do not? The art of remembering dreams is influenced by the first few minutes after waking, the health of a person, environmental, and biological factors. A person has a large impact on their ability to recall dreams along with what they dream about, even though many people do not know about this.

“Dreams are a sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind” (Myers). They can occur anytime during sleep. Although most vibrant dreams occur during deep sleep, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when a person’s brain is more active. Most people tend to have at least 4 to 6 dreams per night while in REM sleep. While everyone dreams during sleep, but not everyone remembers. Scientist aren’t quite sure why some people remember more than others, but there are many factors that can contribute to why this may happen. What we dream, why we dream, why not everyone remembers their dreams, and nightmares are all topics and questions that have gone through my mind.

There are many theories about dreaming, like some neurological theories made by different people. Some examples of activation synthesis hypothesis were made by Freud who had his own interpretation for dreams, he was one of the first one to come up with theories about it. He believed it was the unconscious coming to life, that dreams were fulfilling our wishes in our sleep so we could keep on sleeping relaxed; that the manifest content and the latent content once combined would give meaning to the persons true wishes. As transferring the unconscious thoughts into consciousness ones, that was called dream

One of the most recent explanations for why we sleep is the brain plasticity theory. This is based on findings that sleep is connected to changes in the structure and organization of the brain. This phenomenon is still not completely understood, but its connection to sleep has many critical implications. It has been known, for example, that sleep plays a crucial part in the development of infant's brains. Infants spend about fourteen hours a day sleeping. A connection between sleep and brain plasticity is becoming clear in adults as well. This is seen in the effects sleep have on people's ability to learn.