The topic I chose to write about is sleep because I think that sleep plays a significant role in a person's health and could be a beneficial topic to read about. Sleep is a naturally recurring state of mind characterized by different consciousness, relatively self-conscious sensory activity, inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles, and reduced interactions with surrounding. Mammalian sleep occurs in repeating periods, in which the body interchanges in two highly distinct modes known as non-REM and REM sleep. REM stands for "rapid eye movement".
During sleep, most systems are in an anabolic state building up the immune, skeletal, nervous, and muscular systems. The internal circadian clock promotes sleep daily at night in diurnal species, …show more content…
Each type has a separate set of physiological and neurological features associated with it. REM sleep is associated with dreaming, desynchronized and faster brain waves, loss of muscle tone, and suspension of homeostasis REM and non-REM sleep are so different that physiologists classify them as distinct behavioral states. In this view, REM, non-REM, and waking represent the three major modes of consciousness, neural activity, and physiological regulation. The alternation between REM and non-REM can be explained in terms of cycling, reciprocally influential neurotransmitter …show more content…
This rhythm is called the ultradian sleep cycle. Sleep proceeds in cycles of REM and NREM, usually four or five of them per night. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine divides NREM into three stages: N1, N2, and N3, the last of which is also called delta sleep or slow-wave sleep. The whole period normally proceeds in the order: N1 → N2 → N3 → N2 → REM. In other animals the subdivision between phases of non-REM sleep is not typically used, although animal non-REM sleep can be described as lighter or deeper. There is a greater amount of deep sleep (stage N3) earlier in the night, while the proportion of REM sleep increases in the two cycles just before natural