| Sleep | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Airdate | May 14, 2002 | ||
| Curriculum | Health Science | ||
Sleep is a BrainPOP Health & Science video that launched on May 14, 2002.
Summary[]
At the end of the movie, Moby pretends to be sleepwalking back and forth making Tim unamazed.
Appearances[]
Transcript[]
Quiz[]
Quotes[]
- Tim: Now is it okay if I get some?
FYIs[]
Quotables[]
“Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.” –Friedrich Nietzsche (pictured), German philosopher
“No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap.” –Carrie Snow, American humorist
“Now, blessings light on him that first invented sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even.” –Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish author
“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.” –John Steinbeck, American author
“All men, while they are awake, are in one common world; but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.” –Plutarch, ancient Greek historian
“Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye,
Steal me awhile from mine own company.” –William Shakespeare, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Quirky Stuff[]
There are a lot of different sleep disorders, but none as unsettling as somnambulism, also known as sleepwalking. As you might have guessed, people who sleepwalk get up, walk around, and even engage in activities like washing dishes or rearranging furniture, all while fast asleep.
Unlike many sleepwalkers in movies and cartoons, sleepwalkers move around with their eyes open, although they often have a glazed or “dead” appearance. Sleepwalkers have no conscious control over their actions. If they’re awakened abruptly, they’re almost always confused and disoriented, with no memory of how they got there.
People have engaged in sleepwalking behaviors that are dangerous or bizarre. For example, in 2007, a German boy sleepwalked straight out of a fourth-floor window, and in 2005, a British girl had to be rescued after sleepwalking to the top of a 40-meter crane. A few people have even been acquitted of murder after inadvertently killing people in their sleep!
According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, 18 percent of the world population is prone to sleepwalking. It’s more common in adolescents than adults. This is because sleepwalking occurs during deep sleep, or “slow-wave” sleep (the stage after REM sleep), and adolescents spend more time in this phase than adults. It’s also more common among boys than among girls.
Scientists aren’t sure exactly what causes sleepwalking, but think it may be triggered by stress and anxiety.
Sickness and Health[]
Here’s a look at some common sleep disorders.
Sleep apnea is characterized by interrupted breathing during sleep. People who suffer from it will go 10 seconds or more without taking a breath. This can be caused by something obstructing the airways during sleep (which often happens in people suffering from obesity), or by imbalances in the breathing mechanism. Apnea can lead to increased fatigue and sleepiness during the day, and can be corrected by wearing special devices that open up the airways at night.
People with narcolepsy suffer from excessive sleepiness during the daytime. Often, they’ll fall asleep quickly, without warning, several times a day. After these brief naps, they’ll wake up suddenly. People with narcolepsy often suffer from other sleep disorders, such as insomnia, the inability to sleep at night.
Sleep paralysis is the inability to move one’s body either immediately after waking up or, less commonly, while falling asleep. During REM sleep, the brain shuts down the body so it doesn’t move; sleep paralysis occurs when this state persists after someone has woken up, or when starts too early. It can last from a few seconds to several minutes, and is often accompanied by feelings of panic and terror.
Bruxism occurs when someone involuntarily grinds or gnashes her teeth during sleep. It’s caused when someone’s chewing reflex kicks into gear during sleep. More than 30 million Americans suffer from it to some degree, and it can damage your teeth.
Theory[]
So why do we need sleep anyway? There appear to be many reasons why our bodies need sleep, but not all of them are well understood.
For one thing, recent studies have shown that sleep is tied together with learning and memory. A 1994 study at Israel’s Weizmann Institute showed that subjects’ ability to recognize certain patterns on a computer screen was directly tied to the amount of REM sleep they got. And study at Trent University in Canada showed that people were better able to learn motor tasks—like playing a guitar or a video game—after spending time in Stage 2 sleep.
In a study at the University of Lubeck, in Germany, subjects were asked to perform a tiresome mathematical equation. There was a hidden trick to the equation that allowed the subjects to perform the calculation in a much shorter, less tedious way. Subjects who had gotten a good night’s sleep before completing the task were twice as likely to find the hidden trick as the subjects who didn’t sleep.
As The New York Times reported, many of the researchers who worked on these studies believe that during REM sleep, “the brain proceeds to mix, match and juggle the memory traces it has preserved, looking for hidden connections that help make sense of the world.” This may explain why the brain is so neurologically active during REM sleep. But there’s still a lot that scientists have to learn about the human brain before they can explain exactly why humans need to sleep.
FYI Comic[]
