Sleep Definition and 159 Threads

My question is suppose we go to sleep without setting an alarm and intending to get up only when we wake up. How does the body know that it needs X hours of sleep at night. Is our subconsciousness monitoring our stress levels and when it has determined that our stress level is sufficiently low...

What is you best guess or has science already solved it?

Ok, so a few mos ago some you computer whizzes said low power or sleep was ok way to leave my computer at night ... Those buttons worked as prescribed, got a yellow lamp atop my tower... Then after a few mos the white color lamp atop the tower remained on...still does, does not change to...

Hi guys I am having a tough time fighting what I think is chronic sleep deprivation. It is 2:39am as I write this, and I cannot fall myself to sleep, and yet when I am in school, or reading on the weekend afternoons, I will have hell trying to keep myself awake. My eating pattern is unusual, I...

Sorry, An eight year old boy still breastfeeding? A 12 year old sleeping with their parents? While they're having sex? http://www.andersoncooper.com/2012/05/21/photos-inside-time-magazines-are-you-mom-enough-issue/...

Hi PF, I need some help. I'm studying to be an electrical engineer and I'm trying to make a cheap, non-invasive device that can detect when a person is starting to fall asleep. The device should be able to work on any person and perform a task before they can fall asleep. *Can anyone tell me...

Hi, I am correcting a Embedded C code which requires Burst sleep mode. This sleep period is purely depend on the user input cool time and this is really to coll the machine. I thought of using Sleep function for this user input time but is it able to respond to other interrupts in this...

Hi, I am correcting a C code which was written for a flame machine. My desire is to give a burst cool time when the machine working continuously. In deep, user could have the facility to enter the flame time and cool time before a continuous operation. So, i exactly want to off the...

Shes really hot is it ok? I know its unethical for professors to pursue students but what if i pursue her? Anybody else have this problem?

I have two questions with which I'd appreciate some help: (1) What are the pros and cons of leaving my home PC in SLEEP mode instead of "SHUT DOWN" (shut off)... I tend to leavge it in sleep mode for portions of the day and wonder if I should bother shutting it off for the night. (2) I...

Just assume, for the sake of argument that staying on top of your ordinary responsibilities consumes most of your entire day, e.g. you rarely have breaks or time to yourself. I think many of us have been there before. You notice your grades are slipping and you want to improve them. You...

Homework Statement 8. Describe why rails are used in building a digital logic circuit. 9. Describe why a pull down resistor is needed for a switch in a digital circuit. Homework Equations 8. I've found nothing on rails. 9. A resistor with one end connected to a LOW voltage level...

A good nights sleep is something I always look forward to. It really is the best part of the day. Alas, tonight I have not slept so well. And, I will have to plough through the day. Any good remedies for a bad nights sleep?

some times I am kept awake till like 1am, oops sry spelling error.

Polywhatawhosea? Polyphasic sleeping is when u break up your sleep into smaller sections throughout the day. You condition your body to naturally hit REM sleep right when u fall asleep so you get the restorative qualities of REM sleep yet you sleep only a fraction of what you would with one core...

in C how can one use rand,srand and sleep functions... also what type of random numbers are generated by rand & srand.? thanks

Do you dream constantly? Does "dreamless sleep" even exist? We know that... We can dream in all 5 stages of sleep (not just REM) We move around very often throughout the night (all in nREM since you're paralyzed in REM) Memories are sorted out constantly in all stages of sleep. And if you...

I wasn't quite sure whether to put this here or is skepticism and debunking. Anyway here goes. I was reading the other day about this different way of sleeping that allows one to sleep just two hours a day. It is called the Uberman sleep schedule. Basically, one sleeps every 3-4 hours for 20-30...

As I was lying awake staring at the ceiling last night, I wondered what the effects of sleep deprivation were. Would you experience decreased coordination, memory loss, ect? A timeline would be useful, i.e. Day 1-lalalalala, like that. I have heard that the CIA once used sleep deprivation as a...

One of biology biggest mysteries is why do we sleep. In spite of decades of research. Scientists still haven't figured out the secret of sleep. If you are aware of the arguments and research. You would know that anabolism can occur even while being still... so why do living things have to...

I was just wondering how much sleep you actually need to stay alive and healthy. I sleep very little, 6 hours on a good and normally more like 4 hours. The thing is however I feel totally fine and no matter what I do I can't sleep any more, I was talking to my cousin about this and he says...

OK so people told me that you are partly conscious/on a low level of consciousness when you sleep. They also told me that you perceive everything around you when you sleep, but don't think about it. Now, when you sleep your memory doesn't work on as high of a level as when you're awake. If it...

Hi all, just out of curiosity, how much sleep did you get in school (high school, college etc.)? I'm a high school student from Singapore, and I average under 6 hours of sleep per day. But in my school, I get more sleep than probably about 80% of the student population. I know some who get...

OK I have a few questions about sleep. What do you feel when you sleep? I read somewhere that being asleep is different from being dead or under anaesthesia so what do you feel? Like do you perceive passage of time or something. I read somewhere that you do and it sort of makes sense since when...

Hi, I'm Andrew, a 2nd year Physics undergrad studying for my end of year exams. Currently I'm looking into new, perhaps unconventional ways of learning. I have used conventional techniques to date, just reading, writing and doing problems to learn, and I have done quite well in all of my exams...

OK, if you=consciousness and consciousness=awareness does it mean you die when you sleep since you're not aware? And when you wake up it isn't you because it's a new awareness? Also since there are tiny temporal gaps between when you receive brain waves does it mean that you die many times in...

Is it true that we swallow insects and spiders when we're sleeping?

I am an ordinary high school studnet and I sleep about ten hours a day while many of my friends in my home country sleep about three-four hours a day. It looks like I sleep more than the average, where I have heard that an abverage person sleeps 8 hours a day, but I always feel tired. Also, I...

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I heard some people have a disorder where they can never go to sleep even if they try. I think I heard it can happen after some trauma. My question is, how do I catch this disease?

Due to my illness i have not slept for 72 hours, i have had some cat naps of 10 mins or so, my question is how long could a body keep this up.

Has anyone had sleep paralysis before? I experienced my first instance of sleep paralysis last night and it's extremely odd. My eyes were completely open and I heard the voice of my brother, and the noise of my other brother running downstairs, this was all accompanied by zippers opening and...

Hello PFers, My exams are approaching and I need to put in more studyhours. I can't getup without having a sound sleep of atleast 8 hours. I tried many things - kept the alarm far away so that I have to walk a few steps to turn it off, put the A.C. on a timer etc but failed. I don't care if...

Hey guys, Description of Sleep Schedule I'm not sure if you have heard of the "Uberman sleep schedule" before but it consists of sleeping in 30 minute nap periods every 4 hours so that you can stay up consistently 24/7. I'm not sure if there are long-term detrimental effects but I am...

It's a pretty common topic at phdcomics. :p But anyways, what do they feel about them? Do they consider it a positive thing or a negative thing? Certain administrators HATE this (well, certain people who hate "weird" people would hate this, or I guess, people who are obsessed with keeping their...

...so forgive the stupid game: What would be the most efficient way to reproduce the following without using keyboard shortcuts for formatting, or any variant of a quote + copy-paste method? Do you know how long this took?

I knew that this amount of sleep (or less) seemed to work for some people. However the general view was that most people needed 7-8 hours of quality sleep for good health. This follow up study in women seems to refute this. The researchers followed over 400 women over 14 years with minimal loss...

My wife, who teaches German at the same college where I teach, organized an excursion for dinner tonight at a German restaurant in another town about a 45-minute drive away, including about 15 students and some faculty and staff. We all drove down there in several cars. After dinner, a...

Hi I'm not a biology or science student. So, please keep your replies in plain and straight language so you could be understood. Thanks. Do animals and birds also become unconscious during their deep sleep like humans? Among humans the extent to which one is absorbed in one's sleep varies...

I remember hearing somewhere that the body undergoes a series of detoxification phases as you sleep. The body can only perform this process when you are asleep so getting 7-9 hours of sleep is not enough; it's when you get the sleep that's also important. However, I tried using Google to...

Ok, I will never post another biology question to yahoo answers. I'm watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos for the billionth and billionth time, and suddenly something other than stars got my attention: lymphocytes. I watched them destroying bacteria and I wondered: do they just destroy the bacteria...

If sleep were not required, but just optional (you didn't get tired), would you ever sleep? I can say that I'd sleep much less often, if ever.

Physiology texts indicate that an animal deprived of sleep will face homeostasis disturbances, for example they can loose weight despite an increased caloric intake, and they will eventually die. An animal deprived of REM sleep for several sleeping sessions in a row will show increased REM...

I was just reading this article on the WSJ online entitled "Man vs. God". Well surprise, surprise I'm a Christian and happen to understand enough about physics to be a computer Engineering major. My question is, is there proof of the non-existence of "God". i.e is it right to say there is no...

I was curious to see the sleeping patterns of some the intelligent people here at PF. I get 5-6 hrs per night on average. Considering the consensus of a "good night's rest" is 8 hrs, I am worried that my 6 hrs a night might be negatively influencing my studies. What is your sleeping average...

I slept at 5:30 p.m. today, woke up at 12 midnight because I slept 1.5 hours yesterday night. I think the only reason why I slept for 6 hours is the melatonin. I took another dose of it at 1 p.m. but I'm still here typing at 2:30 a.m. so chances are I won't feel sleepy until 10:00 a.m. AND...

Sometimes, usually early in the morning when I'm half awake/half asleep I dream of reading out of a book. The words appear very clearly and the image remains fixed, and I read from left to right, just like with a real book. Sometimes the words do not exist, it's gibberish, sometimes its fully in...

I've been trying to get used to 5 to 8 hours of sleep, 6.5 hours per day on average for a month now. There are still some days where I just want to sleep in, and if I do sleep in I'll oversleep for 12 hours. Here is the thing, I can easily run on less than 7 hours of sleep, but when I wake up I...

I've always been curious about the answer to this question. Can anyone point me to some research regarding this subject matter? Have we made any advances on finding out the answer to this question? I am assuming that it would be pretty inefficient, and toiling on the body and brain to be active...

Anyone use sleep machines? My father is asking one for xmas. Are they really just cd players or is there more to it? For example this Brookstone one I am looking at has claims of delta wave technology. Is that bunk?

Beginning last Sunday, I began to have sleeping problems. I just seem to stay awake the whole night. My body is extremely tired (and sore) but my mind just keeps going on and on... and keeps me awake. It's kinda strange that sometimes I feel extremely hot and don't feel comfortable at all (even...