more messing with science–sleep!

I know that I said there might not be a blog post until Saturday/Sunday and already it’s Monday and still no blog post. Well, busy-ness stops tomorrow so there will hopefully be a post later tomorrow, and things can start to get a little more consistent again. However, I’ll post some random fun stuff I learned in physiology for your plotting little heads.

Very interestingly, scientists don’t know why we we need sleep. All they know is that we do need it but why exactly, besides the fact that we are tired, who knows? They do think it might have to do with the immune system and they do know that no sleep leads to death.

While in REM sleep (this is the sleep where you remember your dreams. It is very important sleep.) your brain wave activities looks very similar to when you are awake.

Sleep use to be thought to be a passive process but is now considered an active process due to the fact that they can see electrical activity going from the lower brain centers to the higher brain centers while sleeping. Why might that be important? I don’t know. They have also found that if you damage one of the lower functioning parts of the brain, it causes insomnia.

One more thing not related to sleep but in the same category as brain activity.  Memories have not been found to be stored in one area of the brain. They basically seem to be stored all over the place. Why do I bring this up? Because Bob can’t be hit in the head, have slight brain damage, and forget everything because of his brain damage.

So, although that is basically my physiology class in a nutshell, I’ve been trying to keep an ear open to possible things that could be referred back to stories, and this all seemed very valuable information. It’s also my first idea for a post in almost a week. (If you care, stress and a lot of school work due causes me not to think of post topics.)