The Mystery of Sleep Essays -- Essays Papers

The Mystery of Sleep ~ Rest for the body, Activity for the brain ~ Everyone sleeps. While humans sleep, they do not procreate, protect, or nurture their young, gather food, earn money, write papers, etc. Surely, at least once, most people have wondered why they sleep in spite of these disadvantages. According to Greier (48), it is hard for scientists to answer the seemingly simple question of what, exactly, sleep is good for. Sleep occupies one-third of humans' lives, which seems like a waste of precious time; however, no one can survive without sleep. According to Shelton (5), sleepy drivers in the U.S. cause approximately 56,000 car accidents every year. Also, Wolfson and Carskadon (875) report interestingly that the students who achieve good grades sleep longer than the students who are struggling or failing in school. Furthermore, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the near meltdown at Three Mile Island, the environmentally disastrous oil spill by the Exxon Valdez, and the loss of the space shuttle Challenger were all caused by people who made m istakes because of too little sleep (Coren 1). Sleep deprivation seems to cause detrimental effects to humans' daily lives. Sleep is a state marked by reduced consciousness, diminished activity of the skeletal muscles, and depressed metabolism. Humans normally experience sleep in patterns that follow five observable, progressive stages (stages 0~ 4) of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and a separate pattern of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (Coren 31). An electrical encephalogram (EEG), devised by Hans Berger in 1919, is used to measure electrical activities of neurons during the stages: Stage 0 is not real sleep, but going to bed and preparing for sleep. During stage 1, th... ... (1997): 48-50. Hobson, Allan J. {Sleep}. New York: Scientific American Library, 1995. Meddis, Ray. {The Sleep Instinct}. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. Moreno, Anne. "Why We Sleep? Getting a Good Night's Sleep Is Important to Your Health and Also to Your Success in Life." {Current Health 2} 25.2 (1998): 6-13. Rechtschaffen, Allan. "Current Perspectives on the Function of Sleep." {Perspectives in Biology and Medicine} 41.3 (1998): 359-90. Shelton, Deborah L. "Sleep-Deprived Drivers Linked to Highway 'Carnage'" {American Medical News} 38.26 (1995): 5-6. Stampi, Claudio, ed. {Why We Nap: Evolution, Chronobiology, and Functions of Polyphasic and Ultrashort Sleep}. By Jurgan Arnoff. Boston: Birkhauser, 1992. Wolfson, Amy R., and Mary A. Carskadon. "Sleep Schedules and Daytime Functioning in Adolescents." {Child Development} 69.4 (1998): 875-89.