Sleep Wake Research Paper

Sleep disorders alter ones sleep pattern and often results in the inability to either sleep or sleep soundly. They often cause you to feel restless, tired, fatigued, and irritable. It is estimated that nearly 75 percent of adult Americans experience sleep disorder symptoms at least a few nights per week. At the same time, sleep disturbances in some form are seen in as many as 25 to 30 percent of infants and children (“Sleep Disorders” 2013). Clearly a huge conundrum in the world, sleep disorders affect an inordinate amount of people. Millions of people suffer or have suffered from a sleep disorder at one point in their lives and if mistreated can impact organ systems functioning negatively. Physical disturbances, medical issues,

In the United States, the amount of time spent sleeping and engaged in deep sleep is decreasing. According to the Center for Disease Control, 50 to 70 million Americans have problems with a sleep disorder like sleep apnea and insomnia. On average, 35 percent of individuals receive less than seven hours of sleep during the night, and 37.9 percent of people admit to unintentionally falling asleep during the day.

normal counterparts. These findings have led to a robust exploration in the science of sleep

Studied actually show that only when we do sleep certain genes in the brain refurbish and rebuild in a sequence of chemicals reaction.

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

compounds promote wakefulness as well as its actions in the brain are still not well

Everyone has had a night where they just cannot fall asleep. Yet a sleep disorder is not that, but a regular occurrence that affects daily life and sleep at night. When put into perspective, sleep disorders can be very destructive to the human body. At night, everyone's bodies needs time at night to restore and rejuvenate, to grow muscle, repair tissue, and synthesize but when you have a sleep disorder that cannot happen. Having a sleep disorder not only does not allow all those things to happen, but is also very tough and draining for those affected. Sleep disorders can make those affected tired, weak, and dysfunctional at the simplest thing such as getting out of bed. Although there are four main sleep disorders, there are actually exactly

Every day scientists have been performing sleep and dream tests on people for the past decades but could not come up with an exact reasoning to why we sleep or dream. There are many theories to why we dream they may include that it may be a physiological, biological, or psychological functions but that have not to be answered. But that have not stopped many scientists from coming up with speculations. But we do know that our dream cycle is usual most lavish and finest during the rapid eye movement of sleep also known as the REM stage of sleeping. Dream are still to be considered to be a mystery because they have a litter meaning to them and it hard to recall what happened in the dream. Except the fact that many scientists in the scientific

In the brain, we form synapses to learn. Synapses are the connections in our brains. Scientists have many different theories as to why we sleep, and Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli, biologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe that during sleep our brains “prune” synapses for improved memory, and they “proposed that synapses grew so exuberantly during the day that our brain circuits got “noisy.” When we sleep, the scientists argued, our brains pare back the connections to lift the signal over the noise.” They also found indirect evidence to support their hypothesis of “Synaptic Homeostasis”. In one study, they found that the synapses in a sleeping mouse’s brain were 18% smaller than an awake mouse. In another study, Graham H.

If physiologists devoted the most research time to behaviors humans engaged in the most, we would probably have a full understanding of the biological purpose of sleep. After all, humans, with the exception of most college students, spend one third of their lives in a somnolent state. Despite its fundamental role in human and animal life, sleep is, even in an age when neuroscience has reduced many behaviors to neurological mechanisms, still quite mysterious. What processes are taking place during sleep that benefit the organism? Why spend so much time in an unresponsive and vulnerable state? That these questions haven't been definitively answered is really not a function of a lack of effort on

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.

did a study on narcolepsy, described as a poor control of sleep-wake cycle, and found that there is a positive correlation with REM disruptions. They also found that narcoleptic patients have a 90% possibility of destroying neurons in the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the region of the brain which is part of the sleep-wake cycle. It is connected to the hippocampus through the thalamus, and part of the limbic system (http://www.ninds.nih.gov, 2014). The limbic system is involved with the emotions of everyday life (Mallick, B. 2011). Mallick also found that during REM sleep “P-wave generator” is activated. This is where neurons branch out towards the thalamus, and visual pathway. They found that this generator facilitates hippocampal

Sleep deprivation is a worldwide epidemic. The increasingly rapid pace of society and round-the-clock access to technology are two factors that play a central role in sleep deprivation (Centers for Disease Control, 2015). Short-term effects of temporary sleep disturbance are typically limited, associated with only minor physiological consequences. However, long-term sleep deprivation (i.e., more than 24 hours) is associated with many harmful consequences (Meerlo, Mistlberger, Jacobs, Heller, & McGinty, 2009). Meerlo et al. (2009) found that sleep disruption leads to reduced neurological functioning, which can have a devastating impact on learning, concentration, and memory. It also increases susceptibility to neurological disorders such as

National Prescribing services have set guidelines to manage insomnia based on its causes. “See Appendix E” It refers to various treatment options available. (4)

All forms of life have their distinct predictable daily schedules known as the circadian rhythm. This endogenous twenty-four hour rhythm controls the metabolic, behavioral, and biological functions of an organism’s system. In mammals, the circadian clock is located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) which is a group of cells positioned on the anterior hypothalamus in the brain. A disruption in the circadian rhythms sleep/wake cycle disrupts the timing and pattern of sleep in mice and thus, alters the quality of sleep overall [1]. The quality of sleep has often been determined by the frequency of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep present in the sleep cycle, the more frequent meaning a higher quality of sleep.