Brain Activity During Sleep Essay
Brain Activity During Sleep
Imagine spending 1/3 of your life doing something and not knowing why you do it or what purpose is behind it. Sleep is one of the greatest mysteries that science is struggling with. It was once considered an inactive or passive state in which the mind used to recuperate from the day. This of course is not true, since the brain is in active stages while asleep and sometimes may even reach to a higher state of awareness than when awake. This fact has bewildered many scientists, and researchers have yet to find an answer to why our brain acts at a higher state while asleep. What’s going on inside our brain while we sleep? Nearly every day we leave consciousness and enter a state of dreams and deep sleep, yet we wake up unaware of what has happened during the time asleep. If we ask someone to tell us about what they dreamt the results are almost always unreliable. In fact it’s estimated that we forget 95% of the dreams we have, especially within the first 10 minutes of having them.
In the early1950’s an incredible incident occurred. A researcher named Eugene Aserinsky, also known as The Stubborn Scientist, had made a ground breaking discovery, by constantly staying up at night in order to research his patients …show more content…
sleep patterns. He had used an Offner Dynograph, an ancient brain-wave machine used to collect abnormalities in the brain, on his 8 year old son, Armond. Scrubbing Armonds head and connecting wires, Armond went to sleep, yet Aserinsky fought the temptation. During study, Aserinsky, noticed that the Offner Dynograph pens propelled swiftly. Even though Armonds brain activity repelled which is a notion that he was wide awake, in fact he was asleep, and Armond’s eyes were fluttering around in short bursts under his eye lids. Eugene could only assume that his son was affiliated in a brain activity that required an amount of energy similar to the awake state. He also stated that the brain is going through a series of transformations during sleep, explaining why at one point his son was dormant and the other he was awake when in fact he was asleep.
As wakefulness slips away, we become drowsy, and enter stage one of NREM(Non-Rapid Eye Movement). As time passes we slip under deeper levels of unconsciousness, until reaching stage three known as deep sleep stage, in which the mind lay dormant.
After ninety minutes, the brain submerged into Eugene Aserinsky’s discovery known as REM(Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.
During this time the brain gives notions hinting that the person is awake but the person is sound asleep. The only thing that you see is jerky eye movements. In fact if scientists did not see the eye movements of a person in REM, they couldn’t have differentiated their brain activity during sleep from the waking state. This was another mystery the scientists were bewildered by and so the experiments began. They found out that during this stage people remember the dreams they have after they wake up, but soon the dreams vanish due to the quick transformation of the brain. And this phenomenon is known as Lucid
Dreaming.
In NREM we remain dormant and we’re incapable of remembering anything during this time but in REM our brains are active, due to dreams. Many questions have yet to be answered such as why do dream? What is its purpose? Now as scientists are able to search the brain’s activity thoroughly they may be on the brink of discovery.
In NREM our brains are inactive but we are still capable of movement, and people who sleepwalk do it in this stage. But in REM we are paralyzed, except for the muscles of our chest which enable us to breath and the muscles of our eyes. This is called sleep paralysis and we face it every time we sleep.
Since we Lucid Dream in REM, sleep paralysis is important for it keeps our REM stage unhindered, which prevents us from acting out our dreams. Scientists discovered a certain REM sleep disorder called Narcolepsy. Instead of the usual balanced time for REM to occur during sleep, REM sleep will burst into wakefulness. Since in REM sleep paralysis occurs, it will burst free into the conscious world. This loss of muscle tone is called Cataplexy. Scientists know that Cataplexy is triggered by a strong burst of emotion such as anger, happiness, fear, and laughter; so as an emotion occurs REM jolts into the waking world.
The people, who were diagnosed with Narcolepsy, said that during the time Narcolepsy occurred they were fully aware of their surroundings but their eyes were shut and they would go into a state of dreaming. They can hear, taste, and reason with any of their current surroundings. The unbalance between wakefulness and REM, gave them an increase in hallucinations and the dreams that occur in REM, plunge through the conscious world making it hard for the patients to differentiate between reality and a dream.
Scientists believe that Narcolepsy gives a hint to unlocking the mysteries of dreams. During REM our brain is very active but still small parts of our brain lay dormant. There are many theories explaining why we dream, but one stands out as the strongest. Each part of our brain is responsible for distinct functions our body performs, and so scientists came to the discovery of a theory as to why we dream. The frontal part of your brain, where the most sophisticated thinking is done, is dormant, whereas the part of our brain where our emotions exist is active. As the sophisticated part of our brain isn’t functioning the primitive part takes control, explaining as to why our dreams are always bizarre. Our emotions take control.
Some scientists believe that dreaming is an epiphenomenon. But others believe that dreaming has a purpose, which is to alert us from threats. Most of our thoughts before sleeping is negative (anxiety, anger, fear etc...). So to prepare us for the unknown, dreams manipulate our emotions and so by being a form of meditation it makes the following day easier to endure.
We cycle through a full sleep cycle every 90-120 minutes, meaning that REM sleep reoccurs four-six times a night, and so we dream more. The more anxious we are when we go to sleep is when our first dream is most disturbing. Our emotions are turned into a nightmare and our brain begins to survey our reactions. During the following dreams, the brain is exploring its memory networks to find a solution to this problem. By finding similar problems from the past our brain tries to intervene in the dream to aide the process of protecting us from threats of the conscious world.
At some points our emotions are too intense to be handled by dreams. When this occurs we cannot pass through the first dream, and so we replay the dream continuously in a form of a nightmare. Manny people have said to have the same recurring dream, and most of it came true after waking. A woman once had repetitive dreams of wolves eating her intestines. As gore as it is, after waking she was diagnosed to have stomach cancer. Again our dreams bring up more equivocal mysteries, to still unsolved mysteries. Why or how would our brain realize this symptom and act on it in a form of a dream? It could have been coincidence, but can symptoms occur frequently in an increasing pattern with different people showing similar results?
One theory for this awkward phenomenon is that the brain does a scan of the body and after realizing the problem projects the problem in the form of a dream. Dreams can know what is going on before the conscious mind would. So is the unconscious mind stronger than the conscious mind? Can it surpass our expectations and develop a new kind of ability that will revolutionize medical treatment? Will we be able to see, symptoms that will occur 50 years from now, and so evade the consequences, by dreaming? It is believed that during REM our brain stores memories as we dream and discards useless details. When we are awake, if we study we place the information in temporary memory but as we dream we file the information permanently. Its proven that if you study and then dream sleep(REM) you will do better on the test the next day, than when staying up all night and cramming knowledge. Bruce Daymor, a designer in NASA, uncovered the solution of how to build a permanent moon base, through dreaming. “I basically absorbed all the information needed for months, than one night I consciously said. Ok everything is in there (my mind), go for it, boot up the dream processor and give me something”. He came up with the idea of robots. Robots can build the moon base even before astronauts landed. So is the unconscious world stronger than the conscious world? We still don’t know. But what we do know is that we can harness the brains power through lucid dreaming. If dreaming is powerful enough to control all our emotions and feelings, imagine the possibilities if we control our dreams. Scientists have only scratched the surface of dreaming. Despite its power it is only outdone by its mystery. Conscious or unconscious, our brain controls our lives, and may take us even to greater length of adventure through dreams, which is a parallel universe in which scientists have only started to reveal. As mysterious as it is, scientists have started to make breathtaking discoveries and as we advance in life mysteries of the unconscious, it may be revealed.
Imagine spending 1/3 of your life doing something and not knowing why you do it or what purpose is behind it. Sleep is one of the greatest mysteries that science is struggling with. It was once considered an inactive or passive state in which the mind used to recuperate from the day. This of course is not true, since the brain is in active stages while asleep and sometimes may even reach to a higher state of awareness than when awake. This fact has bewildered many scientists, and researchers have yet to find an answer to why our brain acts at a higher state while asleep. What’s going on inside our brain while we sleep? Nearly every day we leave consciousness and enter a state of dreams and deep sleep, yet we wake up unaware of what has happened during the time asleep. If we ask someone to tell us about what they dreamt the results are almost always unreliable. In fact it’s estimated that we forget 95% of the dreams we have, especially within the first 10 minutes of having them.
In the early1950’s an incredible incident occurred. A researcher named Eugene Aserinsky, also known as The Stubborn Scientist, had made a ground breaking discovery, by constantly staying up at night in order to research his patients …show more content…
sleep patterns. He had used an Offner Dynograph, an ancient brain-wave machine used to collect abnormalities in the brain, on his 8 year old son, Armond. Scrubbing Armonds head and connecting wires, Armond went to sleep, yet Aserinsky fought the temptation. During study, Aserinsky, noticed that the Offner Dynograph pens propelled swiftly. Even though Armonds brain activity repelled which is a notion that he was wide awake, in fact he was asleep, and Armond’s eyes were fluttering around in short bursts under his eye lids. Eugene could only assume that his son was affiliated in a brain activity that required an amount of energy similar to the awake state. He also stated that the brain is going through a series of transformations during sleep, explaining why at one point his son was dormant and the other he was awake when in fact he was asleep.
As wakefulness slips away, we become drowsy, and enter stage one of NREM(Non-Rapid Eye Movement). As time passes we slip under deeper levels of unconsciousness, until reaching stage three known as deep sleep stage, in which the mind lay dormant.
After ninety minutes, the brain submerged into Eugene Aserinsky’s discovery known as REM(Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.
During this time the brain gives notions hinting that the person is awake but the person is sound asleep. The only thing that you see is jerky eye movements. In fact if scientists did not see the eye movements of a person in REM, they couldn’t have differentiated their brain activity during sleep from the waking state. This was another mystery the scientists were bewildered by and so the experiments began. They found out that during this stage people remember the dreams they have after they wake up, but soon the dreams vanish due to the quick transformation of the brain. And this phenomenon is known as Lucid
Dreaming.
In NREM we remain dormant and we’re incapable of remembering anything during this time but in REM our brains are active, due to dreams. Many questions have yet to be answered such as why do dream? What is its purpose? Now as scientists are able to search the brain’s activity thoroughly they may be on the brink of discovery.
In NREM our brains are inactive but we are still capable of movement, and people who sleepwalk do it in this stage. But in REM we are paralyzed, except for the muscles of our chest which enable us to breath and the muscles of our eyes. This is called sleep paralysis and we face it every time we sleep.
Since we Lucid Dream in REM, sleep paralysis is important for it keeps our REM stage unhindered, which prevents us from acting out our dreams. Scientists discovered a certain REM sleep disorder called Narcolepsy. Instead of the usual balanced time for REM to occur during sleep, REM sleep will burst into wakefulness. Since in REM sleep paralysis occurs, it will burst free into the conscious world. This loss of muscle tone is called Cataplexy. Scientists know that Cataplexy is triggered by a strong burst of emotion such as anger, happiness, fear, and laughter; so as an emotion occurs REM jolts into the waking world.
The people, who were diagnosed with Narcolepsy, said that during the time Narcolepsy occurred they were fully aware of their surroundings but their eyes were shut and they would go into a state of dreaming. They can hear, taste, and reason with any of their current surroundings. The unbalance between wakefulness and REM, gave them an increase in hallucinations and the dreams that occur in REM, plunge through the conscious world making it hard for the patients to differentiate between reality and a dream.
Scientists believe that Narcolepsy gives a hint to unlocking the mysteries of dreams. During REM our brain is very active but still small parts of our brain lay dormant. There are many theories explaining why we dream, but one stands out as the strongest. Each part of our brain is responsible for distinct functions our body performs, and so scientists came to the discovery of a theory as to why we dream. The frontal part of your brain, where the most sophisticated thinking is done, is dormant, whereas the part of our brain where our emotions exist is active. As the sophisticated part of our brain isn’t functioning the primitive part takes control, explaining as to why our dreams are always bizarre. Our emotions take control.
Some scientists believe that dreaming is an epiphenomenon. But others believe that dreaming has a purpose, which is to alert us from threats. Most of our thoughts before sleeping is negative (anxiety, anger, fear etc...). So to prepare us for the unknown, dreams manipulate our emotions and so by being a form of meditation it makes the following day easier to endure.
We cycle through a full sleep cycle every 90-120 minutes, meaning that REM sleep reoccurs four-six times a night, and so we dream more. The more anxious we are when we go to sleep is when our first dream is most disturbing. Our emotions are turned into a nightmare and our brain begins to survey our reactions. During the following dreams, the brain is exploring its memory networks to find a solution to this problem. By finding similar problems from the past our brain tries to intervene in the dream to aide the process of protecting us from threats of the conscious world.
At some points our emotions are too intense to be handled by dreams. When this occurs we cannot pass through the first dream, and so we replay the dream continuously in a form of a nightmare. Manny people have said to have the same recurring dream, and most of it came true after waking. A woman once had repetitive dreams of wolves eating her intestines. As gore as it is, after waking she was diagnosed to have stomach cancer. Again our dreams bring up more equivocal mysteries, to still unsolved mysteries. Why or how would our brain realize this symptom and act on it in a form of a dream? It could have been coincidence, but can symptoms occur frequently in an increasing pattern with different people showing similar results?
One theory for this awkward phenomenon is that the brain does a scan of the body and after realizing the problem projects the problem in the form of a dream. Dreams can know what is going on before the conscious mind would. So is the unconscious mind stronger than the conscious mind? Can it surpass our expectations and develop a new kind of ability that will revolutionize medical treatment? Will we be able to see, symptoms that will occur 50 years from now, and so evade the consequences, by dreaming? It is believed that during REM our brain stores memories as we dream and discards useless details. When we are awake, if we study we place the information in temporary memory but as we dream we file the information permanently. Its proven that if you study and then dream sleep(REM) you will do better on the test the next day, than when staying up all night and cramming knowledge. Bruce Daymor, a designer in NASA, uncovered the solution of how to build a permanent moon base, through dreaming. “I basically absorbed all the information needed for months, than one night I consciously said. Ok everything is in there (my mind), go for it, boot up the dream processor and give me something”. He came up with the idea of robots. Robots can build the moon base even before astronauts landed. So is the unconscious world stronger than the conscious world? We still don’t know. But what we do know is that we can harness the brains power through lucid dreaming. If dreaming is powerful enough to control all our emotions and feelings, imagine the possibilities if we control our dreams. Scientists have only scratched the surface of dreaming. Despite its power it is only outdone by its mystery. Conscious or unconscious, our brain controls our lives, and may take us even to greater length of adventure through dreams, which is a parallel universe in which scientists have only started to reveal. As mysterious as it is, scientists have started to make breathtaking discoveries and as we advance in life mysteries of the unconscious, it may be revealed.