Why We Sleep & The Necessity of Dream Sleep essays

Why We Sleep & The Necessity of Dream Sleep essays We sleep for a number of reasons; behavioral advantages, metabolic restoration, development, learning information, and for evolutionary protective reasons. Basically it boils down to two theories: physiological theory and cognitive theory. Physiologically, the sleep-wake cycle has a biological rhythm that activates various brain centers, producing activity. While asleep, usually during dark hours, we give our bodies a time to rest and recoup or rebuild to prepare for another day. It is easier for our bodies to perform and see to do things during daylight hours, therefore, we are also protecting ourselves. With the cognitive theory, dreams are a way of learning and thinking, mnemonic in nature. Dreams are believed to use our bodys down time to associate the pieces of information that havent been associated to anything previously. Id say it is a form of house cleaning. Dreaming is believed to be instrumental in memory retention and consolidation. Top scientists, however, have extremely varying visions of what occurs during sleep. A study on the role of REM sleep and memory retention and consolidation was performed by Harvard Medical School. Robert Stickgold, a professor at the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, published research that he believes provides compelling evidence that the mind works hard during sleep. They had two groups of students participate and taught each of the students the same material. One group slept as normal without interruption, but the other group was not allowed any REM sleep. The deprived group had far less retention of the material than did the group that was allowed REM sleep. According to this study memory is closely linked to REM sleep. Memory works two ways: to store important information and to remove trivial information. "The brain is taking information and helping us put it into a form that we can understand," Stickgold said. "Understanding the ...