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 understanding of sleep improve after the death of that cat?  Certainly, even without that study we could’ve guesses with reasonable reliability that elongated periods without sleep can lead to both psychological and physiological illness. Radio DJ Peter Tripp once stayed awake for over 200 hours and was reported to have suffered hallucinations and paranoia.  This, with the research I have mentioned previously, evaluates that prolonged time without sleep is not to be recommended and that for well-being a constant and regular sleep cycle is urged.

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Another theory of sleep, linked with health reasons, is that it has restorative purposes.  Studies show that when we are awakened from sleep can lead to how we feel when we are awakened: disruption during slow wave sleep (SWS) leads to one feeling tired; disruption during rapid-eye movement sleep (REM) leads to one feeling anxious/irritable – ostensibly, this means that if we are allowed enough SWS sleep we will be physically restored and if we are allowed enough REM sleep we will be mentally and psychologically restored and ‘fit.’  However, there are serious limitations to any research studying dreams ...

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