The Roles of NREM and REM Sleep On Memory Consolidation Essay example

This is a short article written by a collaboration of people by a company named Today’s Science. Their main goal was to describe the pattern of sleep a human goes through during the night. This cycle is called NREM and REM, non-rapid eye movement and rapid eye movement. They mostly describe what happens during sleep because without sleeping you could not dream. Dreaming occurs during the rapid eye movement cyc

There are a few factors that are essential for life such as breathing or eating, but one of the most essential factor is sleep. Even though the amount of sleep people need differs from one individual to another, the fact is that eventually everyone needs to sleep. People know the importance of sleep, but due to the increased workload and the pressure of society people are getting less sleep. As a result, there has been an increase interest on the effects lack of sleep has on the mind especially the memory of a person. Many questions arose about the relationship between sleep and memory due to the fact most high school and college students have become sleep deprived. For example, does more sleep mean higher grades?

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.

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).

The average human spends about 25 years of their life sleeping. That is equal to one-third of a person’s life. So if sleep is vital and common among every single human, what do you know about it? What happens when we sleep (Attention Grabber)? Before the 1950s, scientists believed that the brain would just “shut off” when we would go to sleep. It wasn’t until the discovery of the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) state that scientists really looked into what happens in the brain while we are asleep. Studies have found that we go through a cycle of stages during sleep, and it is important for our health (Orientation to Topic). Today, I am going to inform you about what really happens when we sleep, and some issues that are found among it (Specific Purpose). In order to really understand this worldwide commonality, you need to know some background on sleep, the stages in the cycle, and some common disorders (Central Idea). I have taken a year long psychology course that went into depth on sleep psychology, and I have done extensive research on the topic to better grasp it (Statement of Credibility). I want to inform you on sleep so you can understand what happens when you close your eyes every night, and so you can detect any irregularities in your sleep pattern (Statement of Goodwill). First, I will give a background of why and how we know to sleep, then I will explain the stages in the sleep cycle, and finally I will tell you about some common disorders (Preview).

There are two types of sleep: non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep, which is divided into four stages and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. A sleep episode begins with a short period of four NREM stages and finally goes to REM. However, individuals don’t remain in REM sleep for the whole night sleep; it will loop between stages of NREM and REM throughout the night. The function of alternations between these two types of sleep is not yet understood, but irregular cycling and absent sleep stages are associated with sleep disorders. (1) Sleep patterns change continuously and considerably with age. The general trend is that sleep efficiency decline with age. Newborns sleep about 16 to 18 hours per day, young children (age 2- age 5) from 11 to 13 hours, adolescents from 8 to 10 hours, adults from 7-9 hours and elderly people are more complicated because of individuals’ health status, age, gender, work, and emotion. (What Happens to Your Body When You Don’t Get Enough Sleep). Every report has a different range of sleeping hours because some people have jobs at midnight, and they cannot sleep at night. Many parents don’t get seven or eight hours sleep because they need to feed their children or change the diaper when their children need it. Many people don’t really know how many hours they need to sleep for a night because they are busy with their jobs and always work

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.

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

and cognitive function. These findings have led to a robust exploration in the science of sleep

Sleep has been an important topic of research for many years. Early sleep literature only reported observations from sleep habits to compare and contrast with the data taken from the wake state. Before the majority of the science behind sleep was discovered, it was assumed that sleep was when the brain “turned off” and was in an entirely homogeneous state (Dement, 1998). Slowly, advancements were made in the study of sleep, including in 1729 when Jean Jacques d’Ortous deMairan demonstrated the persistence of circadian rhythms and in 1877 when narcolepsy was first described in medical literature (Dement, 1998; “Sleep Research Timeline”, 2017). Sleep research has since become much more advanced and is progressing quickly.

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

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

Many biotic scientists believe that sleep is a positive role, which is necessary for human's life. It has been shown that there are four sleep stages basics, and a dreamer has to have an NREM sleep which is before the REM sleep. Shafton (1995) states that when a person lay to sleep, they enter sleep onset or stage one by closing their eyes, but their eyes still have uncoordinated movements (SEMs). After a short time, they move to the next stages, which are two, three, to four sleep stage, and that takes ninety minutes to complete a sleep cycle. He also explains that during sleep stages two to four, the eye movements are absent, which is known as NREM sleep. In 1953, the REM was found by Aserinsky and Kleitman, which they explained it as a rapid

Veronique Greenwood’s article, “Why Do We Need to Sleep?” was written in early January for The Atlantic. The studies for the article were located in Tsukuba, Japan. In Tsukuba, there is a new institution, the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine. The institution was built for researchers to be able to do more in depth studies of sleep. The benefits of sleep are still mysterious, however, there is still hope in uncovering these sleepy mysteries. The man behind the institution is the director, Masashi Yanagisawa; who created it to learn more about the basic biology of sleep, rather than the causes and treatment of sleep problems. If there is someone or thing that is awake for a long period of time they will eventually have a

However, a complete understanding of the roles of REM and non-REM sleep in learning and memory has been elusive. 2a. One piece of evidence suggesting the importance of REM sleep to consolidate learning after studying is that neural activity recorded when learning is repeated in the subsequent period of sleep. Another piece of evidence suggesting the same importance is that REM duration increases after learning. This research does not suggest that non-REM sleep is unimportant in learning. 2b. Animals who are kept from sleeping don’t learn as well. We know that is not because animals that are kept awake just feel more stressed because sleep deprivation only affects learning when the deprivation happens during REM sleep. 2c. One neurotransmitter that might enhance learning after REM sleep is acetylcholine. Researchers know that acetylcholine affects learning during REM because when acetylcholine antagonists are administered as drugs during REM, learning performance is impaired during the subsequent