Talk:Sleep
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Wake/sleep = catabolic/anabolic is problematic
This equation or similarity if frequently stressed in the article of June 2006, but it simplifies what's going on and might lead to some wrong conclusions. For example, a reader might think that we are like a battery, recharging during the night and only using energy during the day. But what do you think happens after breakfast - anabolism of course. Your body is storing some of the nutrients you just ate for later use. I agree with Jfdwolff below. This simple equation of sleep = anabolism should be qualified or deleted. jasu
To Larry Sanger: You are trying to be a guardian of the neutral point of view, but on the way you risk being a roadblock on the way towards education. By adding "Researchers do not know what is the role of sleep", you inserted a blatant fallacy into this text. I could forgive a random surfer or visitor. But it is Larry Sanger who should stand for integrity and progressive nature of Wikipedia. Who does not know the role of sleep? Vertes? If you said "Researchers do not know all the function of sleep" you might be closer to the truth because there are many in the research community who still push on with some of their own theories. If a simple experiment: learn the Towers of Hanoi, get sleep or do not get sleep, check the performance, clearly indicates deficit in procedural learning for sleep deprived, no reasonable person would question the role of sleep in learning. Now multiply it by dozens of experiments, hundreds of researchers, hundreds of papers, ... do you still have doubts. Naturally, go on the net search and you will find thousands of pages with hundreds of theories, but that's not what should make up your mind. Imagine searching the net about the theory of evolution in the 1860s (the most valuable findings in sleep&learning research date to late 1980s and the 1990s). This time I apologize for inevitably harsh words: you are not helping Wikipedia with this. If you are not sure about some texts, put your doubts in Talk or sign in under a different name! -- Piotr Wozniak
I think the wording could be better--I agree with Piotr that it is well established that consolidation of memory occurs during sleep, but that by no means should elevate this simple fact to a "purpose". I'll change the text to something I think better reflects current knowledge; feel free to edit. --LDC
Piotr, making an edit that requires you to add essential text to your article is not a roadblock, it's one of the most important kinds of edits one can make, for purposes of keeping people honest. Now, last I heard, it was an enormous mystery to sleep researchers what the purpose of sleep is, though there were a number of theories. I am willing to concede that in the intervening years (ten?), researchers have concluded that sleep does have at least one specific, well-demonstrated function; but in that case, it would be a good idea to say who the (main) researchers are who have demonstrated this, how it was demonstrated, and so forth--all the details you (finally and helpfully) mention above. As you can see, I stand behind this particular edit 100%. Now I hope that you will edit the article and enlighten us in a way that will shame me into silence. I'll be watching. --LMS
- Naturally, shaming Larry into silence would be a very lowly purpose. I put some links to popular scientific articles at sleep and learning. If they survive future edits, any reasonable person can draw his or her own conclusions about the role of sleep (don't we all pause why should we waste 1/3 of our lives on a seemingly useless state of unawareness and vulnerability? -- the greatest minds in the research community have a very simple answer to that: optimizing memory storage in condition of information excess). If anyone is interested in my own popular scientific summary and practical applications of knowledge about sleep, see: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm. I will try to explain why I do not take on the challenge of arguing my case at Piotr Wozniak -- Piotr Wozniak
Not just humans sleep - other mammals certainly do and other animals have similar rest states. Anyone want to tackle including these. -rmhermen
According to what I've read in body-building literature, sleep is necessary for muscle growth and repair. Sleep probably serves numerous other physical purposes, which should be included in the article. - TS
- Why should we "disconnect" the brain in order to "regenerate" muscle? It is like shutting down the government in order to fix a highway. If muscle impulsation had to be cut off, it could have been done by "paralysis" at the level of the medulla oblongata. If you mean GH, it can also be released without getting "dumb" for 8 hours. You can rest your muscles ok without getting any sleep. The belief that sleep is needed for muscle regenration comes from the fact that the organisms puts various defense mechanisms against sleep deprivation that would slow down registering new generalized and non-interfering memories to a crawl. Those defenses provide for a breakdown of the endocrine anabolic regulation which ulimately leads to "feeling awful" and "unrefreshed" and "broken down" -- Piotr Wozniak
But sleep doesn't only "disconnect" the brain--it also involves physical immobility. It is quite likely true that physical regeneration of muscle is also an important use of sleep. I'm not sure it even makes sense to speak of "purpose" when talking about biological systems--that implies a telos, and biological systems aren't like that. Human-designed things have purpose: we put wings on a plane in order to provide lift. But evolved things are different; things often have many different and unrelated uses. Things that first appeared for one use (like jawbones) often evolve into something completely different (impedance-matching sound conductors). Writing about the role of sleep in learning is a worthy cause; but calling it "the purpose" of sleep is almost certainly wrong. --LDC
- You can easily verify the evolutionary purpose of sleep by removing the demand for its individual functions. You bet, once you do not need to rewire your neural network, you will lose the need to lose consciousness. And the muscular system will help itself. As I said earlier, the "disconnect" (if indeed needed) can happen at a lower level. Would you argue that we cannot say "the role of heart is pumping the blood" only because there are other regulatory benefits of its action? -- Piotr Wozniak (note that immobility is also a result of the disconnect; not to let the muscles rest but to prevent you from injuring yourself while motor centers are in action in REM)
- The first sentence above is quite demonstrably false, since no such experiment is even possible with current technology. No matter how much you protest that you know "the purpose" of sleep (and by the way, I assume you do understand that in English this implies the only purpose) you have not, and cannot, do the experiments necessary to verify that claim, so it is irresponsible and unscientific to make it. The brain is millions of times more complex than present science is even capable of investigating, and all sweeping claims about its major functions are unverified theories at this point. Even the very detailed stuff we think we know about language and perception from the likes of Chomsky, Pinker, and others is not scientifically verifiable yet. Your articles are good stuff, and would be appropriate here in one of two ways: either as they are now, clearly marked as commentary, or else modified to hedge the wild unsubstantiated claims. --LDC
Teleonomy is a concept in biology that deals with the apparent goal-directedness of biological systems. From a teleonomic perspective it is perfectly correct to speak of purposes in biology. See http://www.freedomsnest.com/mayr_biophil.html for more. - TS
Yes, I suppose that's as rational as speaking of "selfish genes", as long as it's clear that these are specialized uses of the words. My remaining objection, then, is to speaking of "the purpose" rather than "one purpose". --LDC
Sleep does not mean physical immobility as stated above. Only in REM sleep does the inhibition of striated muscle occur, and even then there are frequent bodily movements in REM sleep. Bodily movements are common in all other sleep stages. As a technologist in a Sleep Disorders Center, I have watched thousands of sleep studies and have yet to see anyone sleep without moving. A common example of motor activity in sleep, accessible to those who are not sleep technologists - sleepwalking. --rpsgt244
---
Even though bed is relevant to sleep, writing about the fact that we sleep in bed in the sleep entry is as relevant as explaining that the sky is blue in the NASA entry. Naturally, this could change if this was Kidipedia for our young ones, but Wikipedia wants to focus on providing concise encyclopedic information (which can naturally be extended by commentary entries such as "ways of spending the night" where longer explanations or even a scientific discourse of sleeping positions could be placed). 62.21..
- Sleep is the process in which humans and other animals periodically rest, unconscious and unaware of the surrounding world. Sleep occurs cyclically, roughly every 24 hours is equally obvious. It is often good to include those texts for completeness sake. The blueness of the sky is also an interesting phenomenon that should be explained somewhere (but not in the NASA entry). - Patrick 13:30 20 May 2003 (UTC)
p.s. it is not true that circadian cycle lasts 24.3 hours. It may last 23 hours or 27 hours depending on the individual! Hence the concept of ASPS and DSPS. 62.21..
I have no idea what this means, so I'm moving it here.
==Facts== *Often times, the lips are most responsive when met with another pair of lips. This will sometimes cause the sleeper to jolt suddenly, as maybe a defense system.
- Lol. I think they mean a certain cartoon character.--Fangz 00:38, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Too much sleep?
Sometimes we use the phrase "too much sleep", when we sleep for, say, 15 hours (following serious sleep deprivation, of course) and wake up with a monstrous headache. But is there really such a thing as too much sleep? --Furrykef 00:20, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I think the headache is due to dehydration rather than excess sleep. --Kevin 01:46, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
Other definitions
Surely this article should have something on sleep as in "a crust of dried tears or mucus normally forming around the inner rim of the eye during sleep." [1] (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sleep&r=67) -- Livajo 23:12, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Can someone mark a citation to this....
- The state of sleep is common to all known life forms, plant and animal. It is the fundamental metabolic state of life itself. To ask why organisms sleep is equivalent to asking why organisms live at all. To understand sleep one must instead ask the correct question: Why do we awaken? The state of wakefulness is a much different metabolic state; it is a catabolic state, hence the organism can only survive for a certain amount of time before it must return to the anabolic state, otherwise it will die. Roadrunner 03:38, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
RoadRunner; I wrote it. It's a conclusion I reached after some thought about the nature of sleep. GeneMosher 05:19, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Update to 2005 ?
Can the contributor who added "As of 2004, it is as yet unclear exactly what the mechanism which causes death in rats" check out any updates the last year. Jay 14:19, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
In response to the request for a citation on “state of sleep is common…”.
In fact, I don’t think there can be a citation, it is just not correct. In fact it indicates a lack of clarity on the difference between circadian rhythms and sleep. While circadian rhythmicity is found in some single cell organisms, in plants, and in animals, this is distinct from sleep. Plants do not sleep, although they have a circadian rhythm. The circadian system controls patterns of wakefulness and rest. There is some debate about how far down the phylogenetic ladder "sleep" goes. In mammals, sleep is defined by electroencephalographic criteria. To extrapolate this downward- into animals that lack brain architecture to allow EEG characterization, we have come up with a set of behavioral criteria to define sleep (including homeostatic response, rapid reversibility, characteristic posture, elevated response threshold to stimuli etc). While I think most/all sleep researchers will agree that "behavioral rest" is present throughout the animal kingdom (at least mammals through flies- I don't know about worms), there are certainly those who will argue that this does not represent "sleep". However, acceptance seems to be growing, as researchers studying behavoral rest in the fruit fly are now being braver and calling it sleep (backed by some EEG data...). There is a big problem with trying to characterize sleep solely based on observed activity/inactivity or anabolism/catabolism. For example, dolphins have unihemispheric sleep (sleep with half the brain) and continue to swim while doing so. The entry has other factual errors, for example, orexin levels rise slowly throughout the waking period (not rapidly) and then plummet at onset of sleep. If someone else doesn't fix this first, (as there appear to be many people at least talking about this section) then I will be happy to do some re-writing, with extensive scientific citations. J. Faraco
Energy consumption
Is it true that the human body consumes/burns more energy sleeping than while waking (not doing any strenuous work of course) ? Jay 14:19, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- From [2] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/articles/whatissleep.shtml): "the amount of energy saved by sleeping for even eight hours is miniscule - about 50 kCal". —Korath (Talk) 18:15, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
- So the body does save 'some' energy while sleeping. So it must mean the answer to my question is 'no'. Jay 09:15, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
In Ukraine someone does not sleep at all
There is a 64 year old man in Ukraine, only identified as Fjodor, who hasn't slept any in the last 20 years. There is a 14 year old boy in Turkey who stopped sleeping a year ago and a 71 year old chinese man who never slept at all in his life. To solve these cases is paramount for space travel and military applications.
This Phrase (which was at the end of the first section, just before "stages of sleep") is so un-encyclopedic that I felt I had to remove it: It also seems a good idea to take at least one short nap daily, too. - what on earth is "seems a good idea" supposed to mean? Could whoever wrote this please write the sentence properly, including a justification, and desirably an authoritative source. Palefire 00:08, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)
I've had a good search for this information, but can't verify it anywhere, (except on wikipedia mirror sites): "Furthermore, at least one reported car-crash survivor has damaged a portion of their brain resulting in complete inability to dream, disproving that the ability to dream is necessary for life." - so I've taken it out. It has the whiff of an urban legend to it, but if anyone can find a source and prove me wrong, go ahead and put it back in the article. Palefire 00:32, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)
- "Indeed, an Israeli man with a piece of shrapnel in his brain became famous in sleep circles for not getting any REM sleep at all. Despite that, he went to law school and seems to have no trouble handling new situations." TIME Dec 20, 2004 (http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1009765,00.html) The cover title of that Time issue is actually "The New Science of Sleep". Well worth reading. erikD 22:54, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)
Monophasic Sleep
Should monophasic sleep be redirected to the regular ol' sleep entry? Essentially monophasic sleep is sleeping once a day and is generally thought of as sleep (at least to humans :D). It is the alternative to polyphasic sleep - multiple phases of sleep spread throughout the day.
Dinges
I removed a completely misquoted paragraph about David Dinges ("thingy" in Dutch, incidentally) that suggested that gene therapy will decrease sleep needs. Dinges did not actually study short-sleepers himself, at least not recently. He's just talking as experts do, answering eager questions from journalists looking for a scoop. Yes, in theory you could insert a gene that would limit sleep needs. And therefore? For goodness' sake, let's leave this nonsense out of Wikipedia. JFW | T@lk 10:35, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Fair enough. Paranoid 11:09, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
how can we reduce the hours of sleep?
i have a problem with sleeping and i want to know if anyone knows how we can sleep less and still be in shape the next day? does anybody think this is possible? i've heard that there are tehniques that allows u to sleep or better say be in a state of somnolence, for a period of 1h-2h and have the same effect as a 8-9h of actuall sleep time.
- See Polyphasic sleep Kevin 13:00, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)
public schools
I have heard that some public high schools in the U.S. have changed their schedules so that first period starts later, that these changes were in response to studies that indicate that teenagers need more sleep. Where can I read more about this? books? websites? articles? Kingturtle 05:25, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
teenage sleep
I am looking for information about the problems kids encounter as they go through puberty and beyond.... Is this not a really important part of sleep problems?
I have got to say that I am new to this site... in general the information looks good, but the hostility of the edits is really worrisome.... it seems that there are a lot of people that seem very threatened and not very open to the information presented
Plants?
The assertion that sleep is common to ALL life forms including plants is only weakly supported by the article. If anybody knows more about this I'd like to see it spelled out better. The lead of the article is rather all encompassing and I think such a sweeping statement merits stronger support. Relevant text below:
Sleep is the fundamental anabolic process common to all life forms, plant and animal. In animals, the sleeping state is characterized by an absolute minimal degree of consciousness and decreased responsiveness to the surrounding world. Sleep is a dynamic, constructive time of healing and growth for animal organisms.
... It may well be that plant organisms exist in a perpetual anabolic (sleep) state. No catabolic (wakened) state has ever been documented for any plant organism and, by definition, plants do not exhibit the characteristics of animal organisms in a wakened state.
-Tobycat 23:42, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Plants are always asleep because they never seem to be conscious?
For some reason, the author wants to attribute sleep to all living things and says something about how plants are always asleep. I can't see anything about the sentence that doesn't apply to rocks. Shouldn't this be removed?
--Jbaber