Today was much better than yesterday. Throughout most of the day, I've been alert and awake and back to normal. The good days are really great so it's still worth the occasional off day. I had the opportunity to speak with a psychology/neuroscience professor today who offered some very interesting insights.
There are five sleep cycles. 1,2,3, and 4 are non-REM cycles and 5 is REM. The order is Light Sleep 1, Light Sleep 2, Deep Sleep 3, Deep Sleep 4, with 90 minute REM sessions interlaced (though more actively in the later stages). While Light Sleep 1 and 2 are relatively unimportant, Deep Sleep 3 and 4 is when the body creates the most human growth hormone (HGH). A lack of HGH can result in joint discomfort, which is why it's so important that middle-aged and older people get deep sleep to combat arthritis. Accordingly, working out excessively is a bad idea because your body is recovering much more slowly.
Research from just this year found that non-REM and REM sleep affet different kinds of memory. REM is for skills like learning the piano or procedural memory, whereas non-REM is for factual things, critical thinking -- pretty much everything you need in college. That being said, they found that it relies only a little more on non-REM, not entirely. Furthermore, these experiments were done in the context of rats, so although generalization to humans is likely, it isn't guaranteed.
I asked the professor about cognition tests, and she explained that the problem is that the tests are similar to other tests in that practice can improve scores, so I would need a test that studies the same factors but in an unique way each time. Additionally, there are different tests for different types of memory, so I have to decide which is most important to examine.
Something I didn't realize, particularly because I always fall into heavy dreaming, is that REM sleep is extremely light and fragile sleep. If I'm sleeping in a place with a lot of noise, it might make my nap difficult and not fulfilling, which could explain why I was tired yesterday since I took a nap on the top floor of my school's study hall.
This aspect about REM as light sleep has challenged assumptions I had about being able to nap in less quiet social situations. One bad bit: I overslept today for the first time in 10 days. I went to sleep at 8:30 setting the alarm clock to 8:50, but I didn't wake up until 10:30. I wasn't upset about it because while I was feeling inexplicably weird before napping,which was taken care of minus an extremely uncomfortable lucid dream where someone was talking to me, and I couldn't talk back even though I tried. T
he radio show was tonight which rocked, I'm gonna go for my core sleep. I got a lot of stuff for tomorrow, and I need to do my best to maximize my productivity more so than any other day so far.
If I'm incorrect in any of descriptions of the neuroscience aspect, please comment or e-mail me. Thanks
There are five sleep cycles. 1,2,3, and 4 are non-REM cycles and 5 is REM. The order is Light Sleep 1, Light Sleep 2, Deep Sleep 3, Deep Sleep 4, with 90 minute REM sessions interlaced (though more actively in the later stages). While Light Sleep 1 and 2 are relatively unimportant, Deep Sleep 3 and 4 is when the body creates the most human growth hormone (HGH). A lack of HGH can result in joint discomfort, which is why it's so important that middle-aged and older people get deep sleep to combat arthritis. Accordingly, working out excessively is a bad idea because your body is recovering much more slowly.
Research from just this year found that non-REM and REM sleep affet different kinds of memory. REM is for skills like learning the piano or procedural memory, whereas non-REM is for factual things, critical thinking -- pretty much everything you need in college. That being said, they found that it relies only a little more on non-REM, not entirely. Furthermore, these experiments were done in the context of rats, so although generalization to humans is likely, it isn't guaranteed.
I asked the professor about cognition tests, and she explained that the problem is that the tests are similar to other tests in that practice can improve scores, so I would need a test that studies the same factors but in an unique way each time. Additionally, there are different tests for different types of memory, so I have to decide which is most important to examine.
Something I didn't realize, particularly because I always fall into heavy dreaming, is that REM sleep is extremely light and fragile sleep. If I'm sleeping in a place with a lot of noise, it might make my nap difficult and not fulfilling, which could explain why I was tired yesterday since I took a nap on the top floor of my school's study hall.
This aspect about REM as light sleep has challenged assumptions I had about being able to nap in less quiet social situations. One bad bit: I overslept today for the first time in 10 days. I went to sleep at 8:30 setting the alarm clock to 8:50, but I didn't wake up until 10:30. I wasn't upset about it because while I was feeling inexplicably weird before napping,which was taken care of minus an extremely uncomfortable lucid dream where someone was talking to me, and I couldn't talk back even though I tried. T
he radio show was tonight which rocked, I'm gonna go for my core sleep. I got a lot of stuff for tomorrow, and I need to do my best to maximize my productivity more so than any other day so far.
If I'm incorrect in any of descriptions of the neuroscience aspect, please comment or e-mail me. Thanks
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