Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!markh From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Why sleep? (was: Re: Echidnas & REM sleep) Message-ID: <11612@uwm.edu> Date: 1 May 91 01:21:32 GMT References: <42176@netnews.upenn.edu> Sender: news@uwm.edu Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Lines: 37 In article <42176@netnews.upenn.edu> rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe) writes: >In the meantime you'll have to settle for me :) (though I'd also >suggest that you might want to repost your original article to >bionet.neuroscience). I'm guessing from your post that you feel that >the purpose of sleep is to put cortex into a state of low activity. >If you feel that this is in order to give neurons a chance to rest, I >have to tell you that I've never met *anyone* who took that idea >seriously. Now that we're on the subject, after I've been pondering this subject after waking up this morning, let me tell you my opinion on the matter based on some keen self-observations. I slept 11 hours last night, and noticed a significant difference in the functioning of my mind after I woke up. As you go on during the day, and day after day if you miss sleep, a certain thing happens to your mind that I can only describe as "constricting edifices, or structures progressively crystalling throughout the mind." What they seem to be doing is hampering the degree of spontanaiety, the ability to make associations, and they seem to enhance the tendency to become stuck in ruts, and they thus increase stress. When I woke up, and this happens quite often, I felt "refreshed", which means that I felt like someone took the shackles off my brain. Inhibitions were released, thinking was free again. I don't know what they are, but I do know that during sleep (especially with a good dream), they get purged ... almost like they're being washed out by the random noise that occurs during REM sleep. So, on the basis of continuing personal experience, it appears to me that the primary function of REM sleep is to periodically purge the brain of parasitic modes by washing it out with random noise. Of course, your conscious mind catches some of this noise and weaves all kinds of stories around it to make it consistent ... thus: dreams. I'm acutely aware of it, if I happen to be awake when it starts...