![]() Although the field has made tremendous strides in understanding REM sleep, it has done so by focusing primarily on adult humans, cats, and rats (and, more recently, mice). But we-five sleep researchers with over a century of cumulative experience investigating sleep from diverse perspectives in diverse species (mammals, birds, and reptiles) across the lifespan, and in the wild, laboratory, and clinic-believe that these foundational questions remain stubbornly unresolved. It may seem odd that such basic questions about REM sleep are still being asked more than 65 years after its scientific discovery. Indeed, is REM sleep, in any meaningful sense, a thing? Do all these components-like the fork, spoon, and knife of a dinner setting-complement each other to achieve the same function? Or are they more like the varied tools in a Swiss army knife, gathered in the same place, but serving a variety of unrelated functions? If the latter, is there an underlying biological context of REM sleep (e.g., patterns of energy expenditure or gene expression) that explains why all its components are gathered within that one sleep state? Regardless, how do we explain that the individual components of REM sleep come and go across development and evolution, challenging efforts to determine its essential elements. It is produced by complex and anatomically distributed neural circuits that give rise to a variety of individual components: muscle paralysis, rapid eye movements, an activated cerebral cortex, and so on. It is a behavioral state, a brain state, a dream state, and a paradoxical state. It is relatively easy to wake someone from stage 1 sleep in fact, people often report that they have not been asleep if they are awoken during stage 1 sleep.REM sleep is many things. Theta waves are even lower frequency (4–7 Hz), higher amplitude brain waves than alpha waves. As an individual continues through stage 1 sleep, there is an increase in theta wave activity. This pattern of brain wave activity resembles that of someone who is very relaxed, yet awake. The early portion of stage 1 sleep produces alpha waves, which are relatively low frequency (8–13Hz), high amplitude patterns of electrical activity (waves) that become synchronized. In terms of brain wave activity, stage 1 sleep is associated with both alpha and theta waves. In addition, stage 1 sleep involves a marked decrease in both overall muscle tension and core body temperature. During this time, there is a slowdown in both the rates of respiration and heartbeat. Stage 1 sleep is a transitional phase that occurs between wakefulness and sleep, the period during which we drift off to sleep. ![]() The first stage of NREM sleep is known as stage 1 sleep. In this section, we will discuss each of these stages of sleep and their associated patterns of brain wave activity. The first three stages of sleep are NREM sleep, while the fourth and final stage of sleep is REM sleep. ![]() In contrast, non-REM (NREM) sleep is subdivided into three stages distinguished from each other and from wakefulness by characteristic patterns of brain waves. Brain waves during REM sleep appear very similar to brain waves during wakefulness. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is characterized by darting movements of the eyes under closed eyelids. Sleep can be divided into two different general phases: REM sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep. These changes in brain wave activity can be visualized using EEG and are distinguished from one another by both the frequency and amplitude of brain waves. Instead, sleep is composed of several different stages that can be differentiated from one another by the patterns of brain wave activity that occur during each stage. Differentiate between REM and non-REM sleep.
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