The Stages Of Non Rem Sleep

While sleeping, there are many different stages that exist throughout the process. The stages are measured by the brain waves emitted. The process is broken up into stages: 1, 2, 3, 4, and REM (“Stages of Sleep”). REM is known as rapid eye movement. The brain goes through the stages several times in a night and the REM stage gets longer as the night progresses. Many people believe that REM is linked to dreaming, explaining why dreams are usually easier to remember in the morning.

These stages are characterized by bursts of electrical activity on electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings. EEG readings monitor electrical activity representing neuronal activity in specific neurophysiological regions. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is characterized by desynchronized, saw-toothed theta rhythm waves and heightened cognitive activity. Comparatively, high amplitude, synchronous delta waves, and sharp hippocampal waves characterize slow wave sleep (SWS) sleep (stages 3-4 of non-REM sleep) (Tucker et al. 2006).

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.

Dreams can occur in other stages of sleep other than REM, but are usually vaguer. We are able to incorporate external sounds into our dreams such as a telephone ringing of thunderstorm. Instead, most active dreaming occurs during REM sleep, when the brain is most active. During REM sleep, signals from the pons travel to the thalamus, which relays them to the cerebral cortex, which is the part of the brain that interprets and organizes information from the environment during consciousness and stimulate its regions that are responsible for learning, thinking, and organizing information the pons also sends signals that shut off neurons in the spinal cord, causing

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

Although scientists are unsure why we sleep, they do know how sleep works. There are two phases of sleep: Rapid Eye Movement (REM sleep), and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM sleep). These phases help form whole sleep cycles, and a complete cycle lasts around ninety to a hundred ten minutes. If you sleep for eight hours, you will go through about five cycles every night. During these cycles, you are mostly in NREM sleep. REM sleep only lasts for about ten minutes of the cycle. However, as the night progresses, NREM sleep decreases and REM sleep increases. Every cycle of sleep has five stages. In stage one, you will get NREM sleep. You begin to lose muscle tone, which causes twitches and hypnic jerks. You also have hypnagogic hallucinations and

is marked by jerky eye motions called rapid eye movement…” (McPhee 22), also known as REM sleep. REM sleep occurs in cycles of about 90-120 minutes throughout the sleepers’ night, and it accounts for up to 20-25% of total sleep time in adult humans (Mastin). Most dreaming occurs during this stage. REM sleep is characterized by eye movement, increasing respiration rate and also increasing the sleepers brain activity. REM sleep is also referred to as paradoxical sleep because, while the brain, other body systems, and parts become more active, the person's muscles become more relaxed, or almost in a paralyzed state. Dreaming occurs because of all the increased brain activity happening in the sleepers brain, but voluntary muscles become paralyzed. Voluntary muscles are those that are needed to move by choice (Mastin). This period of paralyzation is a part of stage five because it is for protective measures to keep the sleeper from harming themselves at night from the dreaming occurring. In stage five is where the most vivid and memorable dreaming is going to occur for the sleeper a in any other stages “You may have images float by in earlier stages, particularly when you are going through Alpha or Theta, but the actual dream state occurs in REM” (Mastin). Therefore this is due

Sleepwalking occurs during stages 3 and 4 of the sleep cycle, the deepest levels of sleep. This slow-wave sleep is normally characterized by synchronized EEG activity (4). This indicates that mental activity is very low during these stages of sleep. However researchers have shown that the EEG of a sleepwalker has diffuse, rhythmic, high-voltage bursts of delta activity associated with abrupt motor activity (1). This is very different from the EEG activity normally associated with slow-wave sleep. In addition to the EEG results, they found that there is a decrease in regional cerebral blood flow in the frontopariental cortices during sleepwalking (1). This indicates that sleepwalking is a dissociated state consisting of motor arousal and persisting mind sleep, which seems to arise from the selective activation of thalamocingulate circuits and the persisting inhibition of other thalamocortical arousal systems (3).

Sleep is the resting period so the body can eliminate muscle waste, repair cells, strengthen immune system, and recover mental flexibility, attention and creativity. There are four stages we go through while we sleep. In stage 1 , brain waves become small/irregular and drift to edge of consciousness (light sleep) where it proceeds to start stage 2 where the brain emits short bursts of rapid and high-peak waves (sleep spindles). In Stage 3 Brain waves stage 2 + some high peak slow delta waves (slow breath/hard to wake) and last stage, is when the brain emits delta waves and is in deep sleep.

• (NREM 4) Stage 4 is often called “deep sleep” or “delta sleep”. The heart beats the slowest and there is the least brain activity. It is during this stage that sleepwalking usually occurs.

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

There are 4 basic stages of sleep and then you reach Rapid Eye Movement Sleep or REM. The first stage of sleep is when you’re slightly sleepy or starting to doze off. Basically, you’re lightly asleep but at the same time still alert. When this happens, your brains starts producing alpha and theta waves and the movement of your eyes begin to slow down. The second stage is still relatively considered a light sleep. The only differences is that your brain’s wave frequency suddenly increases and slows down. This stage of sleep is considered the best time to wake up when trying to take “power naps.” When waking up at this stage, you’ll feel refreshed and not groggy upon waking up. In stages three and four, we begin deep sleep. The brain would produce

Your roommate comes back to the dorm at all hours of the night, disturbs your sleep, messes up your typical sleep cycle and your ability to learn and your health. Your sleep cycle being messed up can cause harm to your body and mental process.

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

 Sleep is not uniform activity, but one produced of different brain waves throughout the night.