WCHS Science Expo

Does the things we do every day affect how we sleep? Can doing just one activity before you go to bed result in an increase or decrease in sleep efficiency? These are some of the questions that I have tried to answer in my experiments. I have always been curious about how sleeping works and why we do it. I have also wondered why one nights sleep is better than others. I understand that there are many factors that are involved with sleep and I’m not able to control all of these factors that impact you sleep and sleeping patterns. But with this experiment I have done my best to study how activities affect your brain. For my experiment the two activities I study was playing Call of Duty Ghosts and reading a book.

When a person sleeps they go through different cycles. As the person goes through these cycles they react to the different cycles that the brain goes through. For example When I go into REM sleep I become paralyzed but Ill explain further in a moment. The first stage is stage one, during this stage you are starting to “drift off” and fall asleep. After stage one comes stage two, during stage two our brain will begin to start produce short periods of rapid brain wave activity ,known as Sleep Spindles, your body also begins to lose heat and your heart rate will calm. In stage three slow brain waves ,called Delta Waves, will start to occur. Stage three is in between light and deep sleep. Stage four is deep sleep and sometimes referred as the Delta Sleep stage because of the delta waves created in stage three. Finally stage five or REM sleep is when most dreams happen and when the brain is most active. REM stands for rapid eye movement. REM sleep is sometimes called paradoxical sleep because your brain becomes more active but ...

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...eep efficiency for video games were 82% and the average sleep efficiency for reading was 90%. After all of the tests were done I was able to conclude that reading a book can give you an 8% boost in your sleep efficiency and playing a video game causes a 8% decrease in sleep efficiency.

Works Cited

Purves, Dale. "Stages of Sleep." Stages of Sleep. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 18 Jan. 0000. Web. 09 Mar. 2014. .

Smith, Melinda, Lawrence Robinson, and Robert Segal. "How Much Sleep Do You Need?" Sleep Cycles & Stages, Lack of Sleep, and How to Get the Hours You Need. Helpguide, Oct. 2013. Web. 09 Mar. 2014. .

Walcutt, Diana L., PH.D. "Stages of Sleep." Psych Central.com. Psych Central, 30 Jan. 2013. Web. 09 Mar. 2014. .