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Sleep : Rapid Eye Movement

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The human body has many cycles that occur throughout the day. These cycles are commonly referred to as circadian rhythms. Probably the most well-known circadian rhythm is sleep. What exactly sleep does is not fully understood, although it is surmised that the body repairs itself from the wear and tear of the day and replenishes chemicals that were used up throughout the course of the day. The mind also uses sleep for the purpose of making sense of the events of the day. Even small disruptions in this daily cycle impair the ability of a person to both reason effectively and perform physically. There are two kinds of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM), and non-REM (NREM) sleep. Within NREM sleep there are four stages: NREM stage 1, 2, 3, and 4. While in REM sleep the brain is incredibly active, doing all of the things that it normally does during the day, such as eating and walking, as it interprets and sorts through information from the day, but the body is in a state of paralysis because the pons is suppressing the signals that the motor cortex is sending to the voluntary muscles. In an alert person the brain is producing beta waves. These waves are short and fast. When a person is still awake, but relaxed the brain slows down to alpha waves, which are still recognizable as being awake, but significantly slower than beta waves. The next stage of sleep is non-REM 1. In NREM 1 the relaxed-but-awake alpha waves are gradually replaced by theta waves. If awoken while in NREM 1

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