Sleep provides an opportunity for the body to repair itself. Shortwave sleep is for restoring the body in terms of physical activity, while REM sleep is for resting the brain functions. A strong link has been found between growth hormone and tissue repair. Studies show that amounts of growth hormone are greatly higher during the night while you are asleep but are lower and steady during the day while you are awake. The lack of shortwave sleep has also been linked to a decrease in immune function. This supports the idea that sleep helps restore the body
To find out how sleep deprivation affects humans, Dement (1960) connected participants of his study to an electroencephalogram in his sleep laboratory. The participant got woken up any time they showed signs of entering REM sleep. I was found that REM sleep deprivation made test participants more aggressive and suffered from poor concentration than the control group. They also tried to enter REM sleep straight after going to sleep. They made 26 attempts to enter REM sleep by the seventh night. It is to conclude that REM sleep is necessary for proper brain functioning as the brain goes into REM rebound, when deprived of
Have you ever not gotten enough sleep, or cut your sleep short for a class? Show of hands? Alright, well today I will be speaking with you about a subject that is near and dear to all of our hearts. Today I will be talking about sleep, specifically about REM sleep. First off does anyone know what the initials REM even stand for? REM stands for rapid eye movement, and it is the stage of sleep in which most dreams occur. It gets its name from the way your eyes move back and forth in this stage. Though those movements are slower than how your eye would move when you are awake. During a typical night, you cycle between REM and non-REM sleep, but spend the majority of your time asleep in non-REM.
Sleep is essential to life; it is one of several components, including food and water, which keep the living alive. However, a significant percentage of the human population has considerable difficulty reaching and maintaining Stage IV within their sleeping patterns, the stage that allows the mind and body to fall into a deep and restorative sleep, otherwise known as REM sleep. At the core of this difficulty is a condition known as obstructive sleep apnea, a "serious, potentially life-threatening condition that is far more common than generally understood" (Sleep Apnea). Indeed, obstructive sleep apnea can be very dangerous if it is not properly detected and treated.
Sleep is one of the unavoidable daily-living activities and it is one of the most important factors contributing to a person’s health. A quality sleep is essential for the physical, cognitive and psychological well-being of a person. Learning, memory processing and maintenance of the brain are among the most important functions of sleep. In addition to maintaining the brain, sleep has important roles in controlling the
Sufficient sleep is a biological necessity for the normal functioning of humans, it allows the body to rest and to replenish itself so that it is able to serve its function of living. In addition, mental and physical health depend on the amount of sleep we get. Most adults and students value work and college much more than sleep, this is due to the academic, career, and materialistic demands. Researchers have noted a positive correlation between lack of sleep and decreased physical health, mental health, and academic performance. Sleep consists of two cycles: non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM), which are sleep patterns that alternate throughout the night. Firstly, sleep begins with non-REM sleep lasting about 90 minutes followed by REM sleep lasting 10-30 minutes, then the cycle repeats itself. REM sleep is the most important phase of sleep because the body is internally awake, with waking-like brain activity, yet asleep and externally calm. Thus, an uninterrupted REM phase of sleep is necessary for integrating previously learned material, and giving the individual a feeling of being well rested and refreshed. Many individuals will put sleep off so that more work hours, and school work can be fit into the day in order to get a better outcome such as job promotions or better academic grades, but I believe that sleep deprived people show a low performance in daily tasks due to suffering from mental, and physical health disorders.
It is no secret that, similar to other animals, sleep is one of the most important things for a human being’s overall health. According to Watson and Breedlove, there are four main biological/neurological functions of sleep: energy conservation—the body uses less energy when it is asleep through what is called slow-wave sleep (SWS) by doing things such as reducing body temperature and slowing respiration; niche adaptation—the environmental happenings to which organisms are adapted to; body restoration—it restores materials used during awake hours; and memory consolidation—SWS and REM sleep help the brain consolidate memories from the previous day (2012).
Researchers have classified two definitive types of sleep, REM, otherwise known as rapid eye movement, and non REM and have divided the sleep cycle into four distinct stages. REM sleep is associated with dreaming as most of our dreams occur during this stage. REM waves are very fast and resemble beta waves which indicate that you are awake. REM sleep is usually
Research has found that REM sleep has evolved to become part of the dreaming process otherwise known as REM sleep-dreaming. Sleep with electroencephalographic evidence of the brain shows that a human’s brain is awake during sleep because involuntary eye movement occurs. This occurs during the dreaming consciousness every human possesses which is part of the secondary consciousness every human has. There is also non-REM sleep which is sleep that occurs without the rapid eye movement. The importance of REM sleep and dreaming has been studied for many years and has gradually become more informative. REM sleep is important for a human because it allows for developmental brain growth which furthers the evolution of humans.
Sleep is needed for the body to rest and restore. But did you know that there are different classifications of sleep? Over 75% of the human population has NREM, nevertheless, some have REM, it is all based on how large and how slow the EEG waves are during the
The brain activity during REM sleep is mainly mixed brain waves consisting of theta, alpha and beta waves. This is also the point in a sleep cycle where the body is basically rigid. The brain has shut off all muscle movements other than the ones that keep you alive. This stage is a prime example of how the brain is busy while we are sleeping, “REM sleep begins with signals from an area at the base of the brain called the pons. These signals travel to a brain region called the thalamus, which relays them to the cerebral cortex – the outer layer of the brain that is responsible for learning, thinking, and organizing information. The pons also sends signals that shut off neurons in the spinal cord, causing temporary paralysis of the limb muscles”(Brain Basics). Being that REM sleep deals with learning, scientists believe this is the reason infants sleep a large amount of time and also why they are more susceptible to being woken up by the slightest noises. Since this stage of sleeping has a great deal of dreaming and brain involvement some scientists believe that dreaming is the brain’s way of sorting out information it receives during sleep, creating a “story” out of what it gathers. REM sleep could be considered as a work out for your brain, helping us to make sense of what we experience throughout our
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).
As work hours become longer and people’s lives become more packed, the number of hours of sleep that people are privileged to, also shortens. This leads many to question the importance and meaning of sleep. Grivas, Down, and Carter (1999) defines sleep as a “regularly occurring altered state of consciousness that occurs spontaneously and is characterized by a loss of conscious awareness.” There are four to five sleep cycles per night which consists of a period of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM). Non-rapid eye movement is when the body recovers, the neurotransmitters are replenished, and the body tissues are repaired. Rapid eye movement sleep is necessary for the restoration of mental functions. This is known as the repair and restoration theory of sleep. Recent research also points to a variety of other different theories, most notably, the evolutionary theory. The evolutionary or adaptive theory suggests that sleep has evolved to protect animals from danger. In this review, the strengths and limitations of the two theories of sleep will be analysed and evaluated.
 Restorative Theory: the theory of sleep that states that we sleep in order to replenish the processes of our minds and bodies that are depleted during the coarse of everyday life.
The meaning of “restoration” is the act of restoring to the former or original condition. Scriptural the act of restoration to an individual or place that is being restored, the latter state is improved upon over the original state. (Joel 2:21-26, Exodus 22:1, Job 42:10-12). Restoration is an act of God and it is a display of his mercy to those that have fallen from his grace or have been wronged. The act of restoration is exemplified in the very beginning of time as God, restores Adam and Eve who were created in the image of God “Let us make man in Our image” (Gen 1:26 NASB) as clothing from animals were killed to provided a covering of their nakedness and shame. The restoration of humans began that day. It was a foreshadowing of the restoration act of Jesus Christ on the cross that restores the wayward sinner back to a right standing with the Heavenly father through Jesus Christ and by the leading of the Holy Spirit.