Why Do We Need Sleep? Humans need sleep to maintain healthy bodies and minds. Our natural circadian rhythms typically cause us to enter a sleep cycle at least once every 24 hours. Our bodies can release melatonin and adenosine to trigger a sleep cycle, and sleep medicine can also prompt sle...
of Chicago sleep scientist Allan Rechtschaffen. No one has done similar experiments on humans, for obvious reasons, but a 2014 study published in The Journal of Neuroscience found that amere 24 hours of sleep deprivationcaused healthy people to have hallucinations and other schizophrenia-like symptoms...
Rein feels lucky that he doesn’t have the scary version of sleep paralysis, even though he does have hypnopompic hallucinations. He just keeps thinking he’s getting out of bed and standing up. “Eventually, I sort of have to tense my body up enough where I do break out of it, and...
During REM sleep, however, all voluntary muscles are paralyzed, preventing the dreamer from acting out ongoing mental experience. Yet, the muscles that control the eyes are spared from this paralysis, and give this stage of sleep its frenetic name. Lucid dreamers were able to take advanta... ...
Notice that sleep naturally happens when the difference between curves is greatest - you feel the greatest sleep pressure from adenosine, and the least “wake drive” from your circadian rhythm.This explains an odd phenomenon:if you’ve ever had to pull an all-nighter, you might have noticed ...
打个比方就好比每天晚上你的电脑或者手机要进入维护模式,进行磁盘碎片整理(memory 的转移和索引),安装固件更新漏洞补丁(增强免疫系统功能)之类的,喝醉昏睡过去大概就等价于强行拔掉电源——虽然两种情况电脑都黑屏了,但是第二天重启的时候立刻就会知道区别很大。而熬夜晚睡则相当于长期运行内存效率低下、没有补丁的“裸奔...
Infants Show Memory in Surprising Ways In humans, infants demonstrate memory through behaviors such as imitation, recognition of familiar stimuli, and conditioned responses. However, it has remained unclear whether these abilities depend on the hippocampus or other brain structures. To investigate this,...
Why do we sleep?If you live to a ripe old age, you'll spend a cumulative30 yearsof your life asleep. But have you ever really pondered this question? Scientists are yet to establish a unified theory of sleep, mainly because sleep really is a dark area of research. In fact, it wasn...
(a) Why do premature babies sometimes have trouble breathing? (b) What keeps adults from having this problem? Breathing: The process of moving air in and out of the lungs to facilitate gas exchange is known as ventilation (breathing). In human beings,...
Startled by the sudden motion of a swing, this goat's bizarre response to fear caused it to momentarily collapse in fear.