NREM Sleep

As mentioned briefly before, sleeping concludes REM Sleep and NREM, non-rapid eye movement. Kleitman and Aserinsky discovered both sleeps tracking the brain waves, but NREM was not discovered until later on. In Boston University, Ross, an experimenter, were told to take the test after waking up from both NREM and REM. The result was unexpected, which more negative emotions presented in the REM Sleep test compared to the positive emotions in NREM Sleep test. In fact, REM and NREM sleep can affect our memories as well as mood due processing of pleasant dreams. REM Sleep could be a treatment, but it also could worsen conditions like depression. The amygdala is highly active during REM Sleep and causes intense aggression or fear depending on each

Researchers woke twenty depressed/anxious students during REM sleep and then ten minutes into NREM sleep had led to “significantly less positive [emotions] and significantly more negative after awakenings from REM sleep vs NREM sleep.” Although REM sleep show strange results, dreaming in REM sleep remind us of who we are. In other words, personalities form through REM sleep, for the purpose of such is to foresee experience of the future. We test out all possibilities we are afraid to try in reality explaining why bursts of negative emotions occur then.. Consider Matt Wilson’s rat-in-a-maze experiment, in which a lab rat was connected to the brain wave tracker. As the rat follows the maze, Wilson recorded the neurons fires memories as the rat learn the maze patterns. Then, the rat was put to sleep while Wilson track the neurons. Surprisingly, REM memories replayed the same neuron fires previously recorded flashed on when the rat explored the maze, but the rat was actually undergoing the same event as if the rat is running before. The neurons fire at a much slower rate compared to flashes of the session in NREM sleep, for

There are three separate stages to NREM sleep before entering REM sleep. In one night, a person normally would experience at least four cycles of both REM sleep and NREM sleep, where all takes quite a long time to record in an experiment when REM sleep only takes about twenty minutes. In stage one, sleeper are on the barrier of sleeping and wakefulness or “sometimes referred to as somnolence or drowsy sleep” according to How Sleep Works. The muscles and the eyes are quite active, in which they move from time to time. More importantly, “stage 1 is the period of transition from relatively unsynchronized beta and gamma brain waves (with a frequency of 12-30 Hz and 25-100 Hz respectively), which is the normal range for the awake state, to more synchronized but slower alpha waves with a frequency of 8-13 Hz, and then to theta waves with a frequency of 4-7 Hz.” As stated, the brain slowly loses conscious of the body, or the neurons slowly retreat to specific positions to get ready for stage two. In stage two, brain waves are constant as stage one, but waves add on sleep spindles or sigma waves, “short bursts of brain activity in the region of 12-14 Hz, lasting maybe half a second each,” and K-complexes, “short negative high voltage peaks, followed by a slower positive complex, and then a final negative peak.” Sigma waves and K-complexes responsible for