Questions tagged [sleep]
The biological process characterized by reversible unconsciousness, unresponsiveness to external stimuli and motor passivity.
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How do people wake up just before their alarm goes off?
I can wake up less than 2 minutes before my alarm goes off regularly.
I read the common wisdom on the subject which says "circadian rhythm; PER proteins; internal clock". I am skeptical of ...
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160 views
Is once per day the optimal sleep pattern for all mammals?
If a typical human body clock is 8 hours sleep, 16 hours awake, interested to know if any mammals have:
a 12 hour body clock (4 hours sleep, 8 hours awake)
a 6 hour body clock (2 hours sleep, 4 hours ...
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Parts of Brain Active for Dreams | Right Hemisphere or Cortex
I found a research that states cortex is responsible for the contents of the dream. Contents could be people, place, objects etc.
The cortex is responsible for the content of dreams, including the ...
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1answer
167 views
Why is Sleep apnea only risk to males?
I was reading this article. In Risk Factors, it clearly mention "Being a male".
Why is Sleep apnea only risk to males?
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849 views
Why do we feel sleepy when we wake up
Why do we feel sleepy, tired, and feel like we need to sleep more when we wake up? (Like, is there a special chemical in the brain that causes that?).
Are there any ways to wake up without feeling ...
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17 views
Do circadian hormones fluctuations follow sleeping patterns or the time of day?
It is said that testosterone and cortisol are at their highest early in the morning, at 8 am, and lowest at night.
What happens, though, if someone regularly goes to sleep at 8 am and wakes up in the ...
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0answers
50 views
How does sleep prevent our eyes from drying out?
If we don't sleep for about 16 hours, our eyes start to get dry, and no amount of eye drops helps. You use eye drops and then you're dry 10 minutes later.
However, after you've slept for 8 hours, your ...
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17 views
Do lack of sleep affects the process of digestion? [closed]
Many times due to lack of sleep I felt discomfort in digestive tract.Why did it happen?Do lack of sleep affects the process of digestion?
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4answers
841 views
Why do we dream while sleeping?
Is there any specific reason behind why we dream? Why do we sometimes get weird and unusual dreams? Sometimes we can't even recall what we dreamt of. Why does this happen?
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What is the function of dreaming? Does a particular hormone secretion interfere with dreaming? Why do some people dream more?
I'm really interested to know when we are sleeping how a series of stories come to our mind that we called this process dreaming. If you know a useful article on this topic, please tell me thanks.
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Can a lack of sleep degrade balance?
For years, I've noticed that the day after a night of poor sleep (4 hours or less), my balance noticeably degrades. For instance, while walking 20 feet to the coffee maker, I might stumble into the ...
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Can sleep be a barrier against aging?
I know that what I'm writing about may be a little strange, but as far as I know,when we are asleep, our human body is programmed to carry on biological functionalities in a really optimized way and ...
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Is it possible to have sleep paralysis while sleepwalking?
At least from a conceptual level, these two disorders don't conflict. The effect of sleep paralysis is being conscious while having the inability to consciously direct motor functions. Sleepwalking is ...
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1answer
143 views
How fast do we fall asleep?
When looking at the process of sleeping, most research I find point to a group of mutually inhibitory cells which form a sort of biological "flip flop." There's cells that promote awakenness and ...
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26 views
Why do cats sleep in a curled up position?
I've noticed that cats will usually sleep curled up like ball, heads down and titled, with tails near their face. Is there any specific reason that cats would have a tendency to sleep this way?
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Does sleeping fewer hours than needed cause common cold?
Does sleeping fewer hours than needed cause the common cold? If so, how?
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Why have we evolved to snore yet find snoring so annoying?
Human's snore. I doubt this is a new occurence over the last millenia. I find it hard to believe that for the past million years, no human ancestor has been a snorrer.
And yet, the sound of snoring ...
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4answers
7k views
Why did the process of sleep evolve in many animals? What is its evolutionary advantage?
The process of sleep seems to be very disadvantageous to an organism as it is extremely vulnerable to predation for several hours at a time. Why is sleep necessary in so many animals? What advantage ...
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Why do we sleep?
While we do know that the human body is regulated by a circadian clock that keeps humans on a sleep/wake cycle, we don’t really know why. Sleep is the time when our bodies repair tissues and perform ...
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How are our senses dimmed during sleep?
Our senses are not as sensitive during sleep compared to wake. There is an arousal threshold during sleep that only when it is overcome will it wake a person up. My question is how is this arousal ...
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What is “integrated spindle activity” in plain English?
From a research article:
To determine if a combination of spindle parameters allowed for a better group discrimination, integrated spindle activity (ISA) was calculated by integrating over time ...
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0answers
32 views
What happens to eyelids when we feel sleepy?
Why is that whenever we feel sleepy, our eyelids start to feel heavier.
It is not like we can any time close our eyes and will immediately fall asleep. But, when we feel sleepy our eyelids ...
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0answers
22 views
Is it possible for a human being to live on a different day cycle?
I am considering writing a story where a character lives on a 30-hour day cycle.
That is, this person sleeps for 9.5 hours and is awake for 20.5 hours. Then this person repeats the schedule.
I'd ...
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573 views
What is the term for awareness of or inclusion of real sounds within a dream?
I fell asleep while listening to a podcast, and I am sure I was dreaming but I could also still hear the podcast.
The podcast played an important role in the dream, I was searching for the source of ...
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1answer
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What's the technical difference between fainting (and being unconscious) and falling asleep (and sleeping)?
This is actually a popular question along google results but the answers usually sound like:
sleep is voluntary (oh is it?) and healthy
fainting is result of accident and is not normal
I read those ...
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1answer
55 views
If mammals evolved to be nocturnal, then how did we get so staunchly diurnal in such short time?
Much of human health revolves around sleeping well through the night. We know about circadian and body temperature rhythms which make us sleepy at night, peak melatonin production in the middle of ...
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Is there a link between digestion and nightmares?
A common belief is that eating too much before going to sleep can cause to have nightmares. In fact, I often experience it: I systematically have nightmares after eating too much in the evening.
...
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2answers
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Can adenosine be cleared?
I've been thinking about this question for awhile, since reading this question: What causes adenosine build up in the brain when awake?
We know that a couple of things will block adenosine receptors: ...
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1answer
14k views
Serotonin - Does being aroused make you sleepy?
My Psychology text book says Serotonin causes "Sleep, arousal levels and emotion"
Does this really mean that when you are being aroused, Serotonin is released, which in turn makes you sleepy? If so, ...
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1answer
538 views
Why do we fall asleep when our eyes are closed?
Why do we fall asleep when our eyes are closed? When we lie down with our eyes closed, eventually we'll fall asleep. Why is that? Is our eyes closing some sort of trigger to our brain that says it's ...
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1answer
5k views
How loud a sound would need to be to wake someone up?
I have been researching about this and it looks like the term would be auditory arousal threshold. Imagine you fall asleep while listening to music with earbuds. Out of a sudden, the device starts ...
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17 views
Would an h1 Full Agonist Prevent Sleep
According to Wikipedia the h1 receptors stop firing to effectively manage sleep. Assuming I understand how blocking and non blocking receptors work would a full agonist on the h1 receptors ...
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0answers
101 views
Can low melatonin levels and/or LED lights cause or exacerbate macular degeneration?
I have two questions that may or may not be interconnected. My first question is:
Does melatonin prevent macular degeneration? Could low melatonin levels (caused by blue-rich light exposure in the ...
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34 views
Delay of sleeping on cortisol cycle
I was told that cortisol has to be measured at 9am or 4pm, because those where its peak level. But I wonder if changes on sleep patters affect the cortisol cycle.
I mean, if I usually go to sleep ...
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2answers
276 views
What in the brain has gone awry during sleep paralysis?
I experience episodes of what I assume is sleep paralysis (lasting ~ 10-30 seconds) a few times a year, where I'm conscious of being somewhat awake but unable to move. I can hear, but not see, and am ...
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2answers
263 views
Melatonin production, sleep, and “cyan light”; how might this finding be possible?
The BBC News article Cyan colour hidden ingredient in sleep describes research that suggests melatonin levels as measured in saliva could be affected by the presence or absence of cyan color in a ...
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1answer
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Do humans sneeze or cough in their sleep?
As far as I know, I've never seen anyone sneeze or cough while they're sleeping. Google wasn't very helpful either; a lot of contradicting claims.
So the questions remains: do humans sneeze or cough ...
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2answers
598 views
What's the worst that can happen from too much sleep deprivation? Can you die?
It is well known that sleep deprivation causes considerable discomfort in humans (and has even used as a form of torture), but nevertheless there have been people who went through protracted sleep ...
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Sound volume drop when falling asleep in an airplane
Note: This question has nothing to do with pressure change.
When I'm flying in an aircraft at cruising altitude, the monotonous sound often lulls me to sleep. I've noticed that just as I am on the ...
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2answers
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Why sleep? No, actually, why wake?
I was just reading the sleep threads, and I wondered, why is the body so constructed so that sleep is necessary? (Is it just a design error?) But then, how do things come to be awake at all? How did ...
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Why do some people become more aggressive when tired?
Why do some people become more aggressive when they are tired? I've been thinking about this question for a few days and my 'hypothesis' is that the neural activity in the prefrontal cortex lessens as ...
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1answer
547 views
Is there a difference between sleeping late and waking up late vs sleeping early and waking up early?
For example, if I sleep at 1 AM and wake up at 10 AM, will it negatively affect my health opposed to sleeping at 10 PM and waking up at 7 AM?
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2answers
439 views
Can our body adapt to periodic fluctuations in sleep?
Suppose that if I've to attend a morning class then I must wake at 5 AM in morning. Next, if I don't (attend the class) then I wake up at 7-8 AM.
I've experienced that, since I do attend those ...
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Can varied temperature while sleeping help quality of sleep?
I read an interesting article which is about relations between body temperature and quality of sleep.
I'm interested in the phrase from the article.
Other experiments that varied the ambient ...
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1answer
33k views
What senses are active while sleeping?
During sleep, our body activity decreases. I am wondering on the extent of the lowering of this activity regarding our five senses. Clearly, the sense of touch is still very efficient since shaking a ...
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103 views
Do Vaccinium membranaceum plants need a minimum amount of darkness per 24 hours?
I have Vaccinium membranaceum (black huckleberry) seedlings growing in a greenhouse. I have the option of providing fluorescent light to the plants 24 hours a day.
However, it has occurred to me that ...
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0answers
44 views
Does the brain always enter alpha/beta waves upon brief awakenings during the night?
If you realize you are awake briefly before falling back asleep, have you necessarily exited REM sleep or another stage? That is, is the experience of waking briefly (tossing and turning, etc.) always ...
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1answer
340 views
Breathing with Clogged Nose during Sleep
This just happened to me recently, I was trying to sleep with clogged nose, so I tried breathing through my mouth. As you can imagine it was hard, but I managed to sleep deeply.
So I became curious, ...
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489 views
What is the exact frequency of Delta brain waves during Slow Wave NREM Sleep?
I saw a TED talk about researchers playing pulsating pink noise while a test subject is in Stage 3 Non-REM / Slow Wave / Deep sleep and observing an increase in Delta wave EEG activity. This seems to ...
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Why do the humans become sleepy after meals?
I don't know about all the mankind, but I know enough people, who becomes sleepy after their meals. Also, I'm not sure, what kind of food do they consume, but I personally get sleepy almost from any ...
another 'Homo sapien'
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