Theories of Sleep

The first 200 words of this essay...

Theories of Sleep Essay

One theory of the nature of why we sleep is that it is essential for health reasons, and sleep deprivation can seriously endanger our lives. Jouvet deprived cats from sleep (by placing them on a water lily above water; when they fell asleep the fell in the water) and found that the felines behaved 'abnormally'; one died 26 days constant deprivation. Killgore found that sleep deprivation in humans can lead to great latency in decision making. This could have serious implications for certain professions; nurses, for example, who work alternating day/night shifts, could take a long time in administering certain drugs which could endanger patients' life; or, drivers, who drive during the night and often refuse to take breaks, are endangering themselves and others on the road by doing so. These studies suggest that sleep deprivation should certainly be avoided whenever possible - but it could be argued that parts of Jouvet's research were superfluous. You don't need to be a psychologist to work out that prolonged sleep deprivation can cause lasting suffering and the death in his study could certainly have been avoided if common sense was used - i.e. how much did our