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Why Sleep?
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0393.html
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Why Sleep?
Computer models of the sleeping brain and recent experimental evidence point toward slow-wave sleep as a time during which brain cells undergo extensive structural reorganization. It takes many hours for the information acquired during the day to be integrated into long-term memory through biochemical reactions. Could it be that we go to sleep every night in order to remember better and think more clearly? Terrence Sejnowski responds to Edge publisher/editor John Brockman's request to futurists to pose "hard-edge" questions that "render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefine who and what we are."
Originally published January 2002 at Edge. Published on KurzweilAI.net January 21, 2002. Read Ray Kurzweil's Edge question here.
We need to sleep every day. Why do we spend a third of our lives in a dormant state? Sleep deprivation leads to loss of judgment, failure of health, and eventually to death. The cycle of sleep and alertness is controlled by circadian rhythms, which also affect body temperature, digestion and other regulatory systems. Despite the importance of sleep its purpose is a mystery.
The brain remains highly active during sleep, so the simple explanation that we sleep in order to rest cannot be the whole story. Activity in the sleeping brain is largely hidden from us because very little that occurs during sleep directly enters consciousness. However, electrical recordings and more recently brain imaging experiments during slow-wave sleep have revealed highly ordered patterns of activity that are much more spatially and temporally coherent than brain activity during states of alertness. Slow-wave sleep alternates during the night with rapid eye sleep movement (REM) sleep, during which dreams occur and muscles are paralyzed. For the last 10 years my colleagues and I have been building computer models of interacting neurons that can account for rhythmic brain activity during sleep.
Computer models of the sleeping brain and recent experimental evidence point toward slow-wave sleep as a time during which brain cells undergo extensive structural reorganization. It takes many hours for the information acquired during the day to be integrated into long-term memory through biochemical reactions. Could it be that we go to sleep every night in order to remember better and think more clearly?
Introspection is misleading in trying to understand the brain in part because much of the processing that takes place to support seeing, hearing and decision-making is subconscious. In studying the brain during sleep when we are aware of almost nothing, we may get a better understanding of the brain's secret life and uncover some of the elusive principles that makes the mind so illusive.
Copyright © 2002 by Edge Foundation, Inc.
www.edge.org
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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
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Re: Why Sleep?
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In our waking state, as we "experience life" and its joys, cruelties and conflicts, much of the strife we experience is suppressed, either willfully of or automatically. A painful reminder of some recent conflict or perceived moral ambiguity is diverted by "thinking of something else", yet suppressing anxieties does not make them vanish.
If we each had someone to talk to, therapy-wise, we might talk our way through the tensions and resolve them, or at least become comfortable with them, allow them to become integrated and mitigated by our deeper framework (perhaps even changing or shifting that framework).
Sleep may be the mind's opportunity to effect some "psychic adjustment", to integrate and dissipate tensions while the "waking self" has its guard down.
If one takes the human mind, especially the "conscious personality" as a committee of powerful players, "world leaders" who bluster and maintain their positions at a tense summit before the imagined public eyes, then the unconscious/subconsious mind may bring forth the diplomats, the negotiators who work behind the scenes to effect compromise and peace.
Just a thought, of course.
Cheers! ____tony b____ |
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Re: Why Sleep?
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only a theory (not scientific proof):
abstract:
the dream has more unknown implications in the brain than the sleep or mental rest.
the excess stuff created during the active brain may cause mental fatigues. these stresses could perfectly be eliminated or diminished during the sleep/mental rest, but not necessarily during the dream. because dreams not always provide mental stresses relief, but in some occasions they even add an overload of agglomerated information during the sleep which cause a kind of anxiety or nightmare.
during rest, the immune system builds and reinforces itself, this is like a kind of regeneration.
the autonomous nervous system is formed by 2 subsystems: sympathetic and parasympathetic. both systems cannot be active simultaneously. during normal activity of the brain we use our sympathetic nervous system. under this state, the organism consumes energy. however, under the parasympathetic state (sleep = calm activity) our organism make a restore of itself, thus the mental and physical conditions are updated or maintained.
the dreams enter within another intrincated psychic realm, a gap between the conscious an unconscious mind. the dreams could be interpreted as the unconscious detectors of our conscious mind, and also as the hidden evidence of our fantasy / imagination / creative and artistic skills. if, under our conscious mind, we are experiencing preoccupations, or we are worried for any cause, then we produce an imbalance of the two harmonic halves (brain hemispheres).
the frontal brain is formed by two hemispheres: the left hemisphere influences in logic and reasoning and controls the right hand and the right hemisphere, which influences magination, spatial thinking (artistic appreciation and creativity), and controls the left hand.
then, our very bad or very happy experiences occurred consciously during our waking hours, desestabilize or alter the harmonic brain biochemicals, producing specific toxins which influence in such desestabilization. these specific substances are linked with the lived experiences and are stored in the unconscious memory. during the sleep, these substances are randomnly liberated and produce the good or bad dream.
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Re: Why Sleep?
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You sleep because you eat something that is not good for you.
If you eat good food/someting that your body can use to build it-self and not kill it, then you will not sleep to get ride of the by-product in your body.
Sleep happens when the body cannot keep up with the bad food inside of it.
You may think of sleep as a traffic with cars and trucks.
Your body is like a highway/road.
If you put a lot of bad products inside of your body, you body will slow DOWN to the point of SLEEP.
And if you keep doing it....you will die over time.
It may take years, month or days.
But if you don't put anything bad inside of your body, you will stay alive for years and years without ever going to sleep.
FACTS.....YOU EAT TO GROW OR DIE.
SLEEPING IS NOT NATURAL.
SLEEPING IS JUST A WAY OF SAYING THAT YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING BAD TO YOUR BODY.
EAT RIGHT...NO SUGAR, NO MEAT, NOTHING THAT IS MADE BY HUMAN OR MACHINES.
ONLY EAT PLANTS THAT ARE GREEN, OR GROWING.
YOU CAN'T COOK ANYTHING THAT YOU WILL EAT.
REAL SIMPLE....
IF YOU EAT WHAT IS GROWING...YOU WILL GROW.
IF YOU EAT WHAT IS DEAD....YOU WILL DIE.
FUNNY BUT, ALSO WHEN YOU SLEEP, YOUR BODY WILL TRY TO GIVE LIFE TO THE PRODUCT YOU JUST EAT.
Gray is sign of the time....Death is near.
Old skin is sign of the time...Death is near.
Bad teeth, sign of the time...Death is near.
Years, months or days...Death is near.
So eat right...and stay alive.
If you are sleeping a lot...you are dying...Death is near.
Funny but when you think of an old person you will notice that they sleep a lot....
Yes, even a child/bady if dying when they sleep.
You have to feed the child good food.
So the mother who is using her breast as a point to feed the child, she(the mother) has to eat right....to feed the child.
As another subject related to this one...is that..;
When you sleep, you look to the universe to give you life...
You become black....your eyes close and the universe is created in your mind.
This way, your body take life from that which you see....BLACK.
As all the universe is surrunded by BLACK.
ALL THE UNIVERSE IS CREATED OUT OF BLACK....AND CHANGE TO BLACK OVER MANY YEARS.....
BLACK IN...BLACK OUT...
CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SEE WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT...
NOW CREATE YOUR WORLD AS YOUI SEE FIT....
AGAIN, THATS ANOTHER SUBJECT.
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