Why your brain may sleep without even knowing it
Your brain never shuts down, but when you fall asleep your brain sends inhibitory neuron to reduce conscious awareness and bring you to deep sleeping. People with insomnia often feel that they have fallen asleep before their brain has been scientifically determined to be in deep sleep. Normal sleepers may experience this feeling.
Recent research by Daniel Kay, a BYU psychology professor, has suggested that insomnia may be caused by a malfunction in the inhibition process.
He said in the previous studies have shown that people suffering from insomnia seem to be asleep. Their eyes were closed but their brains are still in some typical sleep pattern. When you wake them up, then what would you expect.
Sleep scientists have traditionally referred to this problem as sleep misperception. Kay argues that this term is based upon the assumption that sleep can be categorical. That is, you either have to be asleep or awake. You don’t have consciousness when you are asleep.
Kay stated, “I don’t believe that’s necessarily true.” Kay said, “I believe you can be conscious and your brain in a sleep pattern. It begs the question: What role does conscious awareness play in our definitions of sleep?
The study data was collected through sleep tests of normal and insomniac sleepers.
Two nights of sleep at the lab were required to help participants fall asleep. The participants slept in a quiet area with a comfortable mattress. Participants were monitored using polysomnography (the gold-standard objective measurement of sleep). Once their brain wave pattern of them remains in the sleeping state for at least 10 minutes, a radioactive tracer is injected into the arm. The tracer gets attached to glucose molecules and then injected into active brain neurons. The researchers then woke the participants up and did a brain scan. These images were a snapshot of brain activity in the region that took place while participants were asleep.
Kay and his colleagues discovered that patients who reported being awake for longer periods than the polysomnography measurement indicated, had higher brain activity in areas associated with conscious awareness during non-rapid eye movement sleep.
Good sleepers who reported falling asleep before polysomnographic
sleep happened also had higher brain activity in the same areas.
Kay stated that patients with insomnia, like normal sleepers, may experience a inhibition while falling asleep. However patients with insomnia might not feel they are asleep until there is a significant increase in the brain’s inhibitory activity in areas involved in conscious awareness. As well, good sleepers may feel that they go to sleep earlier than the objective measure, due to higher inhibitory processes in the brain’s consciousness centers.
Kay plans to use these insights and explore possible treatments of Zopisign 10 mg for insomnia.
Kay stated that patients suffering from insomnia may have impaired processes for reducing conscious consciousness while sleeping. Mindfulness meditation is one strategy to target these processes. It can help patients to stop cognitive processes that prevent them from experiencing sleeping.
All Sleep is not the same
During your sleep your brain is likely to cycle constantly through two distinct kinds of sleep. REM (rapid eye movements) sleep and non-REM.
The initial phase in the process is the non-REM phase and consists of four phases. The first stage is when you are awake but then fall asleep. The second stage is resting, which is when the breathing and heart rate are controlled and body temperature decreases. Third and Fourth phases are called deep sleep. While REM sleep was believed as the primary crucial sleep period for memory and learning. Newer research suggest that non-REM sleep is more essential in these areas and is the most restful and peaceful stage of sleep.
When you enter the REM state the eyes are able to move quickly in closed eyes, and brain waves are the same as the ones that occur during awake time. The rate of breathing is increased and the body is temporarily paralyzed while we sleep.
The cycle repeats and with each cycle, however, you’ll be spending much less of the deep stages of three and four of sleep and more within REM sleep. On a typical evening you’ll go through the cycle several times.
Why You Should Sleep
If you’ve experienced fogginess following a sleepless night It shouldn’t come as a surprise that sleep has a significant impact on the brain’s function. A healthy amount of rest is crucial for “brain plasticity” which is the brain’s capacity to adjust to changes in input. If we don’t get enough sleep then we are unable to process the information we’ve acquired throughout each period of time and we’re more trouble remembering it later. Researchers believe that sleeping could aid in the elimination of brain waste cells, something that occurs more slowly while the brain’s in a state of alertness or go for blue sleeping pill.
Sleep is essential for the rest of the body as well. Not getting enough rest or sleep will develop the higher risk of development of health problems. Seizures, depression or high blood pressure migraines get worse. In addition, the immune system is impaired, increasing the chance of developing infections and illness. Even one night without sleep could cause a predisposition for a healthy individual.