On the Function and Evolution of Sleep Essay -- Biology Essays Researc

On the Function and Evolution of Sleep If physiologists devoted the closely research time to behaviors humans engaged in the most, we would probably suck a full understanding of the biological purpose of forty winks. After all, humans, with the censure of most college students, spend one third of their lives in a a rest period(predicate) state. Despite its fundamental role in human and animal life, sleep is, even in an age when neuroscience has reduced many behaviors to neurological mechanisms, good-tempered quite mysterious. What processes are taking place during sleep that benefit the organism? Why spend so much time in an unresponsive and vulnerable state? That these questions havent been definitively answered is really not a function of a lack of effort on the part of scientists, but rather of the difficulties organic in studying sleep. It is easy to observe the harm that is done to a human or animal deprived of sleep. A rat prevented from dormancy impart lose the ability to maintain body temperature and die in about three weeks, showing no evidence of physiological ruin (1). In humans, sleep deprivation impairs thinking and suppresses the immune system. But why this deterioration take place is less clear, and the object of disagreeing theories. This essay will try to explain the function of sleep based on what is at a time known, and attempt to shed light on the reasons and mechanisms for its evolution.An investigation of the control, and perhaps the origin, of sleep might best begin with the hypothalamus, a flat, horizontal structure in the brain that is known to play an important role. Damage to the back service of process of the hypothalamus causes somnolence, indicating that when intact, it sustains alertness (1). In contrast, damage to the front part indu... ...t suggests that some of the circuits utilize in sensory reception and processing also function to represent and maintain memory, and that both functions cannot be achieved simulta neously. Sleep circumvents this limitation, and is thus a surface adapted behavior. WWW Sources1)Scientific American In Focushttp//www.sciam.com/missing.cfm 2)Sleep and Memory evolutionary Perspectives http//bisleep.medsch.ucla.edu/SRS/publications.htm3)REM Sleep = Dreaming Only a Dream http//bisleep.medsch.ucla.edu/SRS/rosenlicht-feinberg.htm4)Birds May pop Their Songs While Sleeping ,Science Magazine article http//www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/282/5397/2163 spare ResourcesDiscussion on Sleep Evolution ,Scientific American articlehttp//www.sciam.com/missing.cfm The diary Sleep http//www.stanford.edu/dept/sleep/journal/