Circadian rhythms regulate many aspects of our daily life. They influence when we get hungry, when we need to use the bathroom, and when our internal temperature goes up or down. New research suggests they even influence your susceptibility to disease (Edgar et al., 2016). There are “clocks” in each and every cell in your body, but the master clock is found in the suprachiasmatic nucleus in your hypothalamus, and this is synchronized to external factors, the most important being light. The most obvious of these rhythms, and the one that you will focus on this week, is sleep. Sleep is a universal phenomenon. Research suggests that most adults need about 7–9 hours of sleep per night to be fully rested and functional (National Sleep Foundation, 2015), although studies suggest that the average adult gets about 6.5 or fewer hours of sleep per night (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2014). Despite this universal need for sleep, we do not really know why we sleep. There are many theories, ranging from REM sleep playing a key role in shaking the fluid inside your eyeballs in order to deliver oxygen to the
cells of your eye, helping with memory, and washing cellular debris out of your brain. This question of why we sleep has received a significant amount of research attention. One form of this is the 2015 Flame Challenge, coordinated by Alan Alda and Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. In this, scientists are challenged to answer the question “What is sleep?” in a way that can be understood by an 11 year old. While we may not understand as much as we would like about sleep, what we do know is that sleep is governed largely by genetic factors, and is “hard wired” into your brain. In this week’s Assignment, you will first analyze and describe the stages of sleep and then discuss the theories of why we sleep. “Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain” “Testing Sleep Consolidation in Skill Learning: A Field Study Using an Online Game” “Impaired memory consolidation in children with obstructive sleep disordered breathing” You may choose your own article; however, it must be approved by your instructor by Thursday before the assignment is due.