Neuroscience Of Sleep

One of the most persistent topics that often holds humanity’s interest is the actuality and purpose behind their own biological functions. Many hold a desire to grasp and understand the concepts of how their body and brain works, and the evolutionary purposes behind every facet of the human existence. Among the most explored functions exists the process of sleep, one of the most mysterious quirks that have puzzled evolutionary biologists for generations. While many understand some basic science associated with sleep, the average person knows so little about the neurological and physiological science and purpose behind it. Many levels of comprehension and theory exist past the layman’s understanding of what sleep is and why it exists. Even though

In their article “The cognitive neuroscience of sleep: neuronal systems, consciousness and learning,” Allan J Hobson and Edward F Pace-Schott attempt to further study brain functions during sleep and unearth their implications. Studies have shown how that the electrical patterns of rest are generated from subcortical and cortical regions within the brain (Hobson and Pace-Schott 680). These generations are not only found in human brain functions, but across many different species of animals. From the transition of waking to NREM sleep, almost all neurons show a decrease in firing, most likely resulting from the different activities that occur in the brain in the front regions of the brain, coming from the brainstem (Hobson and Pace-Schott 680). These activities are possibly influenced by the hypothalamus and circadian rhythms, meaning that waking neurological functions can have an influence and interference on the patterns that occur during sleep (Hobson and Pace-Schott 680). Neurons fire at a similar rate of waking activating during NREM sleep. The thalamus’s influence over the brain activities show themselves to be one of the biggest influences over sleep’s change in consciousness from waking activity, demonstrating how waking functions and separate areas of the brain hold a strong connection to functions occurring during sleep (Hobson and Pace-Schott

Their dispelling of the myth that dreaming is exclusive to REM sleep paints a picture of a more complex dreaming phase, suggesting that it is not as linearly and stagnantly linked to consciousness as one may think. This further shows a fuller picture of sleep being a dynamic process that many continue to still study and understand. The better one understands how sleep occurs and the different patterns that are seen during rest, the easier one can ponder why animals sleep in the first place and why it is