More Brain Points

Time to Sleep

            Our lives are constantly bombarded with desire. A child’s life is filled with cartoons, friends and games. An adult’s life is filled with romance, school, and work. Growing up children are constantly reminded when to go to bed and how much sleep they need for school the next morning. Too often these desires cause us to forget the importance of sleep especially in keeping a healthy brain. What neuronal processes are active during sleep and the transference between the conscious and unconscious is a major topic of research.

It is truly amazing to think how many hours in an entire lifetime are spent sleeping. In Daniel Bor’s book, The Ravenous Brain: How the new science of consciousness explains our instatiable search for meaning, he explains that sleep is the necessary evil in having a superior conscious, as humans do.  Sleep is very important in learning and memory, yet true learning is known to only occur in a conscious state. As conscious beings, our awareness and focus allows us to categorize and take in a multitude of information. This categorization is known as chunking.  Chunking is necessary as our working memory can only hold four items of information at a time. This chunking is possible because being conscious causes people to continually search for patterns. Working memory and this whole process of taking in information can be hampered with a lack of sleep. Learning is most effective with sleep. Sleep helps to consolidate what was learned, so more information processing can occur. In theory, during the unconscious state in sleep-learning cannot occur. The ability to form patterns through information processing has lead to history changing revelations. Sleep depredation can give us a glimpse at what a mental disorder is like. It can lead to irritableness, anxiety, and difficulties on uncovering true patterns in information processing. As a species we cannot survive for long without sleeping.

           

The brain needs time to reset after taking in copious amounts of information. But what actually happens when we sleep? Are we still processing information learned throughout the day? If music or sounds are played in the background do we understand what is going on? Or does the conscious processing portions of the brain just completely shut of in order to rejuvenate?

            Thomas Andrillon, a PhD student, and Sid Kouider, Chief Research Scientist,  from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris sought to answer some of these questions about how stimuli from the environment affect the brain while sleeping. Habitual activities, as Bor mentioned, can be moved to the unconscious to make more room in the consciousness. This automation can be fast. Andrillon and Kouider set up an experiment to see the effects of a developed habitual activity during sleep. They had people categorize a sequence of words by clicking on buttons on the left or right. After a period of time the participants were allowed to sleep while being monitored with and EEG. They saw that the participants’ neurons were still firing as if formulating responses to the words being played out loud. When the participants woke up they did not remember the words in their sleep. Neuronal activity was activated due to external stimuli and decisions were made.

            This recent study has the potential to bring forth more research as to what our brain does while we are sleeping or unconscious. Learning is known to occur in the conscious, yet this study begs the question that subconscious leaning can occur while asleep. If we can uncover the mechanisms as to what processing occurs during sleep, we may be able to understand the transference from consciousness to unconsciousness. Through this understanding we could possibly enhance the quality of sleep and be able to consolidate more of the learned knowledge from our conscious self-leading to even more innovations. In order to work efficiently as a human being sleep is not only necessary but also essential.

Andrillon, T., & Couider, S. (2014, September 17). Brains can make decisions while we sleep--here they are in action. Retrieved October 17, 2014, from http://theconversation.com/brains-can-make-decisions-while-we-sleep-here-they-are-in-action-31716

Bor, Daniel. The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Conscousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. New York: Basic, 2012. Print.