The purpose
Although not fully understood by modern day science, sleep is still the subject of many in-depth scientific studies. These studies have all concluded that sleep is the physical process of conserving energy and allows for the decreases of the body's metabolism by anything between the 5 and 10 percent.
Did you know? Sleep and hibernation is not the same thing. In fact, a hibernating animal still needs to sleep despite the hypo metabolism process that the hibernating animal experiences. During this hibernation process an animal needs to return its body state from a hypothermic state to a euthermic state in order to sleep. This makes sleeping an energetically expensive process for hibernating animals.
Types of sleep
There are two types of sleep in mammals and birds, namely rapid eye movement or REM and non-rapid eye movement or NREM (also called non-REM). Both types of sleep have very distinctive physiological and neurological features attributed to them.
Did you know? The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has further divided NREM into three different sub stages of sleep. These stages are: N1, N2, and N3 sleep, with N3 also being referred to as delta or slow-wave sleep.
The stages:
NREM Sleep Stage 1: This stage of sleep is found between actual sleep and wakefulness. It is commonly known as dozing and the body's muscles are still active.
NREM Sleep Stage 2: The theta activity stage, it is now more difficult to awaken the sleeper.
NREM Sleep Stage 3: This stage is called the slow wave sleep stage. During this stage the sleeper is less responsive to the environmental and outside stimuli no longer produce any reaction.
REM Stage: During this stage of sleep the sleepers eye movement increases and most muscles are paralyzed. This stage is also referred to as the paradoxical stage as the sleeper, although exhibiting EEG waves similar to a waking state, is now much harder to wake than in any other stage.
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