1. Sleep and Consciousness

2. Sleep Stages • Patterns are based on electrical activity in the brain, measured by an EEG. • You move in and out of various stages through-out the night

3. Sleep Stages

4. Sleep Stages • As you fall asleep, pulse/breathing slow, concentration falls away. • That sudden jolt awake? Neurons miss-firing (perfectly natural) • In each sleep stage, the brain waves get wider, deeper • Stage IV is the very deep sleep, most restful and hardest to waken from.

5. Sleep Stages: REM • After Stage IV, we drift towards REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. Deep muscle relaxation (facial/ finger muscles might twitch) & high brain activity • This is when we most often dream! • Lasts between 15-45 minutes, several times a night. • Also impacts learning, info-processing. • More sleep, esp. REM, is scientifically proven to improve learning.

6. Reasons for dreams • Information Processing: the more REM sleep you get, the better you process the day’s information • Sleep more  better test scores in class • Dreaming as the by-product of random neurons (neural-static) in the brain. • We can poke around your cerebral cortex and have similar, hallucination-like results

7. Reasons for dreams • Freud claims it’s our only chance to act on socially immoral, unconscious desires • Killing people, taboo sex, etc. • Claims many of the objects/situations in our dreams have a secret, sexual meaning to them • But maybe we dream because it is FUN • When else can you fly, etc.?

8. The Importance of Sleep • “Required” sleep times with age: • Newborns: 16 hours a day • Adolescents: 9-11 hours a day • Retired: 5 hours a day (Denny’s Early-Birds!) • When you are denied REM sleep (or sleep in general) your body will rebound on the missing sleep when it can.

9. Sleep Disorders • Insomnia: prolonged inability to get enough sleep • Edward Norton in “Fight Club • Sleep Apnea: problems with breathing while asleep • Often leads to restless sleep.

10. Sleep Disorders • Narcolepsy: suddenly falling asleep, very sleepy during the day • Night terrors: disruption in Stage IV sleep, person wakes in terror, often with screaming, sweating, confusion, etc. • Often the subject has no memory of it happening.

11. Sleep Disorders • Sleep-walking: partial awakens that results in a person attempting to carry out normal activities while “asleep” • Usually harmless, fairly normal • Sleep-talking: can occur during REM or non-REM sleep. • Can be one word or longer, often with “conversational” pauses • You can often engage them in conversation • Sleepers have no memory of sleep-talking.