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Essay on stages of sleep
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Essay on stages of sleep
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The Sleep Cycle: There are five stages of sleep. Stage one is where we start to drift off to sleep.
This is where you feel as if you're daydreaming. This is where Alpha and Theta comes in. Alpha is the “Restful Place”. During this we experience strange feelings, like the feeling of falling. You may also experience sudden muscle contractions, these are Hypnagogic Hallucinations. Some people may even hear their name being called or even a cell phone ringing. Theta is the period where you are in between sleep and awake. It usually only last for about five to ten minutes. On average it takes somebody about seven minutes to fall asleep. Some people it takes longer, some people don't need that long.Stage two is when our brains starts to make short
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This is the transition between light sleep and very deep sleep.Stage four is sometimes referred to as
“Delta Sleep”, the delta waves occur during this time. This where the deep sleep comes, it last for about thirty minutes. At the end of this stage is when most people start to sleepwalk and bed wetting. Stage five is called REM. This is where the most dreaming happened. REM sleep is characterized by eye movement, increased brain activity and increased respiration rate. REM sleep is when your muscle become paralyzed. Your brain and other body systems are the most active during this stage because they are so active when we dream. The period of paralyzation is to protect us. This is so we won't run out of bed to get away from whatever is chasing us in our dream.
The Cycle: The sleep stages don't exactly go in that order. Sleep begins with one then two, then three and then that goes into four. The after four, stages two and three repeats before going into
REM. Once REM is over, we go back into stage two. This happens four to five times a night. A complete cycle takes about ninety to one hundred and one minutes. Infants spend almost
Have you ever gone to bed and wondered what does sleep do to your physical and mental health? Sleeping has effects on our physical heart as well as our mental health (disorders, etc.)
Siegel then describes the two different types of sleep as non-REM and REM sleep. During non-REM sleep “the muscles are relaxed but maintain some tone, breathing is regular, the cerebral cortex generates high-voltage waves, and consumption of energy by the brain is minimal” (77). A person experiencing REM sleep, however, has irregular breathing and heart rate, the cerebral cortex generates waves almost like those seen in a waking state, rapid eye movements, high brain metabolism, lack of all muscle tone, and dreams occur. Normally people enter into non-REM sleep immediately upon falling asleep; however, narcoleptics enter into REM sleep first. This causes narcoleptics t...
All mammals exhibit Rapid-Eye-Movement, or REM, sleep, and yet on certain levels this type of sleep would seem to be disadvantageous. During REM sleep, which is when most dreams occur, the brain uses much more energy than during non-REM (NREM) sleep. (1) This "waste" of energy coupled with the increased vulnerability of this state on account of the body's paralysis at this time suggests that there must be a very important reason, or reasons, for the existence of REM sleep and in extension of dreams. Determining the function of dreams, however, has proved very problematic with many arguments which directly oppose each other. Some of the primary functions of dreaming have been tied to is role in development, its production of neuro-proteins, and also to how it may allow for the "rehearsal" of neurons and neuronal pathways. The influence of dreaming on learning is one of the hottest debates. Some argue that dreams aid in learning, others that dreams aid in forgetting, and yet others that dreams have no effect on learning or memory. That REM sleep seems to aid in development might argue that REM sleep may be connected to learning. It seems that most scientists believe that REM sleep aids in certain memory consolidations although some argue that it actually leads to "reverse learning.
in a trance or sleep state where you at times may not be able to tell
So for an average sleep time of eight to ten hours, we go through this sleep cycle four to five times a night. In stage one of the sleep phases, we are in a light sleep that lasts anywhere from five to ten minutes. In this stage, our eyes are still moving slowly and our muscles are slowing down, but may still have sudden muscle contractions like as if we were being startled or as if we were falling down. People in this phase may not feel rested if they are awakened, and might not of felt like they were even asleep at all. In stage two of the sleep cycle, you have successfully fallen into a light sleep. During this cycle your heart rate has slowed down, and your body temperature has dropped. You no longer have eye movement, and your body is finally resting the parts it has used through out the day. The next stage, which is stage three is also combined with stage four of the sleep cycle. These two cycles together are known as the delta sleep or the deep sleep stage, and is a very important part of the sleep cycle. During these cycles your body repairs and re-grows tissue, strengthens the immune system and builds bone and muscle. In these cycle it may be very hard to wake a person up, and if woken they may feel droggy or “out of it” for several minutes. In these stages is when most people have night terrors, experience sleep walking, or sleep talking occurs. In an adults average time of sleep this takes up about fifteen to twenty five percent of the time of sleep. Lastly, there is the REM cycle, which is also known as paradoxical sleep. During this cycle is when most of your muscles are paralyzed, your eyes are moving rapidly, and your breathing, heart rate and body temperature are not regulated. Vital signs show that during this stage, the arousal and oxygen levels
We live our entire life in two states, sleep and awake1. These two states are characterized by two distinct behaviors. For instance, the brain demonstrates a well-defined activity during non-REM sleep (nREM) that is different when we are awake. In the study of sleep by Huber et. al., the authors stated that sleep is in fact a global state2. It is unclear whether this statement means that sleep is a state of global behavioural inactivity or the state of the global nervous system. The notion that sleep is a global state of the nervous system served as basis for sleep researchers to search for a sleep switch. The discovery of the sleep switch, in return, provided evidence and enhanced the notion that sleep is a global state of the nervous system. The switch hypothesis developed from the fact that sleep can be initiated without fatigue and it is reversible1. It was hypothesized that there is something in the brain that has the ability to control the whole brain and initiate sleep. Studies have found a good candidate that demonstrated this ability3. They found a group of neurons in the Ventrolateral Preoptic (VLPO) nucleus. It was a good candidate because it was active during sleep, has neuronal output that can influence the wakefulness pathway, and lesion in the area followed reduce sleep3. The idea that there is something that can control the whole brain and result sleep state supports the idea that sleep is a global state of the nervous system.
an individual is overcome by sleep. It is during these times where the mind is
During the cycle of the phases each lasts for a different period of time during the time we are sleeping.
Humans spend one third of their lives sleeping which is a natural state of rest characterized by a reduction in voluntary body movement and decreased awareness of the
There are five stages of sleep. The first stage is when one prepares to drift off. During this stage, one experiences Alpha and Theta waves. This stage generally lasts five to ten minutes. The second stage lasts about twenty minutes. The brain begins to produce short periods of rhythmic brain waves known as Sleep Spindles. Body temperature begins to drop and the heart rates slows down. During stage three, slow waves
A restorative theory claims that sleep is used to repair the body including the brain. Oswald suggests that slow wave sleep is when body repair occurs and REM sleep is when the brain is repaired. This is supported by the fact that there is an increase in the secretion of growth hormones during SWS. This could also explain why brain activity levels are high during REM sleep, and similar to when awake.
(Transition Statement) Understanding the sleep cycle is the first part of understanding dreams and how dreams happen.
the sleeper will gradually descend deeper into sleep, becoming more and more detached from the outside world and progressively more difficult to awaken. Stage three is the beginning of deep sleep, occurring about thirty to forty five minutes after you first fall asleep. The deepest sleep occurs in Stage four. Stage three and four has the biggest and slowest brain wave. REM sleep, a mentally active period during which dreaming occurs, provided a biological explanation for this phenomenon. Scientists found that brain activity during REM sleep begins in the pons, a structure in the brainstem, and neighboring midbrain regions. The pons sends signals to the thalamus and to the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for most thought processes. There are several myths about sleep. For one, how much sleep a person should get? According to our text book people should sleep for at least eight hours to maintain sound mental and physical health. But every one doesn’t get the chance to sleep for that amount of time. There is no normal amount of time you should sleep. Everyone is not the same. For one I might sleep for five hours and feel refreshed enough to work another shift. Other hand my cousin might need more then eight hours of sleep to feel refreshed.
We experience two phases of sleep which repeat themselves every ninety to one hundred and ten minutes, achieving approximately five complete cycles per night. The phases are non- rapi...
The four stages of sleep are REM (rapid eye movement sleep), NREM1 (non-rem), NREM2, and NREM3. During the REM stage “your heart rate rises, your breathing becomes rapid and irregular, and every half-minute or so your eyes dart around in momentary burst of activity behind closed lids” (Myers, 2014, p. 96).