Tags: #notes
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Sleep & Dreams

Why do we sleep?

While we sleep:

  1. Brain cleans out trash. Glial cells pump out garbage
  2. Muscles recover form injuries
  3. skin is repaired
  4. pancreas- sleep helps break down sugars we eat
  5. intensified one building keeps bones helping.

Two Systems Regulate Our Sleep

Sleep/wake drives

  1. Drive to sleep and drive to stay awake

Circadian Rhythm:

  1. One of the body's biological clocks
  2. Controls timing of when you sleep and are awake.
  3. Over 100 body functions are controlled by the circadian rhythm
    1. temperature
    2. blood pressure
    3. Metabolism
    4. Urination
    5. Appetite
    6. One cycle of the circadian rhythm lasts approximately 24 hours
      1. There are individual differences. For most people it is slightly longer, for some slightly shorter.
  4. Controlled by the supreachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)
    1. SCN controls the release of melatonin, a hormone which causes us to feel sluggish and sleepy
    2. Light suppresses the release of melatonin
  5. Implications:
    1. SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)
    2. Jetlag
    3. Shiftwork
  6. Adolescents and young adults are more likely to be evening types tan morning types, due to changes at puberty
  7. AS adults get older, their circadian rhythm shifts earlier
  8. There is a correlation between type and class time and grades

How Much Sleep Do Adults Need

  1. People Vary. 6 hours is the minimum for anyone. Most need eight hours. Some need ten
  2. Many people need more sleep than the think they do
  3. We are not good judges of whether we sleep enough.

How does insufficient Sleep Affect us

  1. First signs: irritability, moodiness, disinhibition
  2. Then: apathy, slow speech, emotional flatness, poor memory
  3. Then: microsleeps (5 to 10 seconds)--may happen while driving!

Insomnia

  1. Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep most common sleep disorders
  2. Stress, room too light, too hot or too cold, noise, alcohol or caffeine, heavy meals, exercise too close to bed time are all causes of Insomnia.
  3. There is no safe, effective medication for insomnia that can be used long term
  4. The best treatment is cognitive behavioral therapy

Sleep Hygiene

  1. Go to bed only when drowsy
  2. If unable to fall asleep within 20-30 mins, get out of bed and go to another room and do a quiet, relaxing activity until drowsy
  3. Repeat this step as often as necessary and use for middle-of-the-night awakenings
  4. Wake up at the same time every morning, no how little you slept
  5. Go to bed at the same time each night
  6. Use the bed only for sleep or sex, no TV or reading.
  7. Use relaxation techniques
  8. Exercise (but not too late in the day)

REM (Rapid Eye Movement)

  1. About five times per night
  2. First time only 10 minutes
  3. REM longer with each cycle until it is about one hour in the early morning
  4. Note the longer you are asleep, the less time you are in stages 3 and 4.

Dreams

  1. Everyone dreams every night
  2. We only remember a small fraction of our dreams
  3. Most dreams are boring, unemotional
  4. emotionally charged dreams are more often negative than positive--rejection, attack, humiliation
  5. We may incorporate info from the environment
  6. Some people have lucid dreams

Why do we dream? Do our dreams have meaning?

  1. there are three basic theories about dreams
  2. Freud's Theory of Dreams
    1. Wish fulfillment
    2. Dreams are full of symbol
  3. Biological Theory of Dreams
    1. Dreams keep the brain active--otherwise neural connections w ould deteriorate
    2. The brain activity is random, therefore the content of dreams doesn't matter
  4. Cognitive Theory of Dreams
    1. Dreams are the result of random firing of neurons
    2. But our mind tries to make sense of this neural firing in ways that are relevant to waking life so the content of our dreams may be significant
    3. Our mind uses previous thoughts and experience to create the dream story.
    4. DAM-IT Dreams
      1. Dream of Absent Minded Progression