During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading of the Sleep chapter in John Medina’s Brain Rules in your notebook. Then, transcribe your summary and post it as a comment to this blog post before our next class. Even though your in-class writing can be less formal, you should aim for for correctness and formal tone as you revise your handwritten summary into its final, typewritten form: complete sentences, subject-verb agreement, no contractions, etc.
ENG1101 D340 English Composition I, SPR2015
Official site for ENG1101 D340
Last night after reading John Medina’s Brain Rules chapter 3 “Sleep”, I noticed that one of my other classes spoke about the same topic but different answers for do we really need 8 hours of sleep to function properly? In my other class it was stated that you don’t actually need that many hours which I did not agree with but in brain rules the sleep chapter did an experiment where without rest you would be mentally unstable. A part I really enjoyed in the sleep chapter was when after a couple of days the scientist performing the experiment became grumpy, rude, and even paranoid. In my opinion I think you do need at least eight hours to function normally. It’s actually kind of funny because people always say you need eight hours to perform and another thing I’ve heard people say is that if you sleep more than eight hours it’s not good, because what ends up happening when you over sleep is that you wake up more tired than when you when to sleep which is kind of confusing. Everyone knows that sleep is something that you need, it doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter if you spent your day lying around or if you spent the day being active, your brain need to recharge and the only way to do that is to sleep.
From reading the Chapter Sleep, I learned the importance of sleep and how it can affect our daily life. When our brain is tired, it needs to rest or else our Nervous System won’t function properly. If we don’t get enough sleep, it can cause concentration, coordination, memory, and mood suffer. Having enough sleep benefits our brain because it helps our brain function properly. One interesting fact I learned from reading the Chapter “Sleep” is that when you oversleep too much, its actually bad for your health.
While reading the chapter “sleep” in Medina’s Brain Rules the main point was that sleep effects the brain and continuous success of the body. Medina explained that lack of sleep can be experimentally proven to cause hallucinations and stop the brain from working at its full potential. I feel that this personally effects me during the week. I find that I stay awake to finish school work but end up falling asleep. Once I get a good amount of rest by the morning I’m able to work better. Medina also mentioned that going without sleep can cause hallucinations. This fact was frightening and completely understandable. If I go without at least 5 hours of sleep I feel like a whole new, grumpy person so I can only imagine going days.
One of the “12 rules of John Medina” is called Sleep.
This chapter is dedicated to the toping of sleep, how sleeping in general one of the most important activity and our brain really needs to have curtain amount of hours a day to catch up on sleep.
In this chapter Medina shows the results of some experiments. The one that I pay attention on was
With Randy Gardner, who didn’t sleep for 11 straight days and Medina describes what changes were happening in his brain, body and mood.
That experiment perfectly showed how the lack of sleep had negative effect on the brain and Randy’s whole body.
Also how insomnia can have negative impact on human’s activity.
That without sleeping, person are losing ability to think straight, his reaction speed is slowing down, immune system and health overall are getting worse…
Importance of sleep at least 8 hours a day is necessary for health and brain.
As I read john Medina’s brain rules the sleep chapter, I found it crazy that a man would go 200hr without sleep and the effects that it had on him astounded me especially the hallucination and brain power or the brain not working at its full potential witch amaze me because I have notice and it’s obvious too that when you get less sleep you start to space out or pay less attention to task and even get grumpy and mad when you hear loud noises or people talking. Also when you do have a good amount of sleep you tend to understand things better and be more energized.
Brain Rules Sleep was really interesting. Until now I thought that we sleep only because we are tired but today I found another interesting fact that we sleep because our brain needs time to process or to write all the things we do at the day. Medina described clearly why we need proper sleep. According to medina if we don’t sleep we will be less productive the following day. Also if we don’t sleep well there is a possibility of brain damage. Although some people may be able to function off less hours of sleep it is universal to crave an afternoon nap. Staying up longer leads to Decreased logical reasoning, motor dexterity and your mood could be affected by a loss of a couple hours of sleep. As I was reading the fact about lark, owl and hummingbird really caught my attention, and I found out that I was an owl but according to medina owls drink a lot of coffee but I don’t ever think about coffee maybe there is an exception or something. We also get many creative ideas when we are asleep as Mendeleev got an idea creating an periodic table that made all of us easy to remember those elements. When people become sleep deprived, their body ability to utilize the food the are consuming falls by about one third. Also the brains to make insulin and to extract energy from the brain’s favorite source, glucose, begins to fail miserably.We humans are not the only ones who need proper sleep animals need too. When a rat was observed for several days scientists found out that sleep disrupts the learning cycle. In conclusion sleep is very necessary to us to function properly.
In the chapter “Sleep” we learn about how it affects humans, whether with no sleep and getting sleep. Sleep is something is a mechanism that we humans need to survive, without it we probably would not be able to perform everyday activities, like physical and mental activities or we’d probably be dead. People that don’t get enough sleep usually wake up tired and that isn’t good for our health, sleep can also relate to our brains and this chapter tells us how. This chapter is really interesting, I mean I’ve read up on the brain and sleep but once we stop sleeping for certain points our mind starts to hallucinate and that can be very dangerous for our psyches. You can see it when someone does not get enough sleep, baggy eyes, pale skin, and that’s just physical the physical traits, mentally you have a shorter attention span, you start to space out easily and you have trouble processing things as well. Sleep is very important, and that is why everyone needs it to stay healthy not only physically but mentally.
John Medina’s Brain Rules, Sleep chapter is a interesting reading. In other words, it is important to know why we sleep and how is our brain function during that time. We appear to replay certain learning experiences at night, during the slow wave phase but emotionally charged memories appear to replay at a different stage in the sleep cycle. Equally important, it’s a fight because the brain really wants to take a nap and doesn’t care what its owner is doing which mean that we have to respect the nap zone. Also, according to Medina we are a lark, owl, or either a hummingbird. Larks people are most alert during noon, go to bed around 9pm and don’t need an alarm clock. However, owls people is the opposite meaning they accumulate a massive sleep debt while being a hummingbird is a continuum of both in between. I enjoy the fact that Medina include a lot of study examples as also Jonathan Gottschall. I characterize myself as a owl and a hummingbird for my chronotypes. As one can see, less of sleep hurts attention and dexterity our logical reasoning.
Medina’s “Sleep” chapter was so far the most interesting chapter. I like how he talks about how our brains function even when our bodies are asleep. Our brains need sleep in order to process everything that happens daily. If we don’t get enough sleep, as humans our mental processes start to break down. Sleep is also a dire need, without sleep we wouldn’t be able to function, it can even lead to brain damage. It is important that we get at least 7-8 hours of sleep a day. Lack of sleep has a negative impact on our health. We won’t think in the right state of mind, we can start to hallucinate, and our reaction time slows down. In conclusion, sleep is vital to our health, to remain focused, and for our bodies to function properly.
After, I had read the book Brain Rules chapter Sleep I began to understand and learn how sleep actually plays a huge role in our lives. I had learn when the brain doesn’t receive a certain amount of sleep, our brains wouldn’t be able to function the correct way. So when we don’t give our brain any sleep it then affects it in a negative way like mental issues which is no good. To add with that, it also cause the health of the brain to suffer and I truly can relate to this because when I don’t give my brain any sleep. I end up having headaches or have a problem thinking about something which is why now I understand how important it is to sleep.
When reading Brain Rules’ the Sleep chapter, I have learned about the importance of sleep. We spend almost 1/3 of our lives sleeping, we would not waste that much time of our lives if it did not have an important function. Loss of sleep can hurt attention, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity. John Medina says that if you ever feel tired, it’s because your brain wants to take a nap. Doing so would be a good idea, it might make you more productive. In a study, a 26-minute nap increased NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent. He talks about the battle of the two armies going on inside the brain. One army is constantly trying to keep us awake, and the other one is always trying to force you to sleep. Though we know that we all need sleep, the amount that we need seems to vary from person to person. It changes with age, puberty, pregnancy and much more, and of course there are some “lucky” exceptions who don’t nearly need sleep at all. For the normal functioning person, 8 hours a day seems to be more or less how much sleep we need.
I am so far loving Brain Rules. I totally understand everything John Medina tries to say throughout this book. We are currently on the sleep chapter. I can personally say sleep is one of the reasons me and my mom argue the most about, she always wants me to go to sleep but I want to stay up working on my craft, which can be bad for my brain according to john medina because I am taking away hours of sleep by staying up and that can cause my brain to act twice as old. And If I am lucky to recover, it can take almost a week to get my body chemistry to my original age. Loss of sleep can affect us in every way possible, some ways that John Medina mentioned and that I have personally seen in my life when I stay up late are executive function, bad working memory, bad mood, loss of logical reasoning ability and loss of general math knowledge. Another thing I’ve gone through that John Medina mentions it’s the sleep depth, some days when I have nothing to do I sleep until two or maybe three in the afternoon because of pass sleep loss. John medina also explains how impressively our bodies have a watch inside of us. We can feel what time it is even if we are in a cave without any light. After reading this chapter I definitely want to change the way I sleep. I believe I need at least 7 hours of sleep and for now on, I will try to sleep at least 7 hours every night.
It’s no question when it comes to having your good night’s rest! Everyone needs their sleep and without it, it’s extremely hard to function. John Medina sleep chapter wasn’t necessarily anything i didn’t personally know, however when he mentioned that with having sleep, it helps differentiate objects from a ocean of similar- looking objects. I guess it comes with the mind not functioning correctly without sleep but people with sleep could possibly have trouble in the same situation. It seemed pretty questionable and really stuck out the most because it was something within this chapter that i’m pretty sure no one caught. I think now i have to thoroughly read John Medina’s work!
Summary of Medina’s Brain Rules, Sleep
Even though sleep is essential in our daily lives, still many of us are not getting enough of it. It may be because of different reasons. Reasons such as, some of us might have a hectic work or school schedule, and we might just be too involve in other activities associated with our lives in general that may prevent us from getting enough sleep. However, according to Median bad things happen when we do not sleep, such as, if you do not get days of sleep your mental process breaks down. Take Peter Tripp for an example, he stayed awake for more than eight days, which is roughly 200 hours. As a result, after the first 72 hours, he became rude and offensive to the people around him. Then hallucinations set in. In addition, after 120 hours, he showed real signs of mental impairment, which would only worsen with time. At the the end of the 200 hours Tripp developed an acute paranoid psychosis during the nighttime hours, accompanied at times by auditory hallucination.
On the other hand, Median argues that from an evolutionary standpoint, bad things also happen when we do sleep. He says that because the body goes into a human version of micro-hibernation, sleep makes us exquisitely vulnerable to predators. In addition, he believes deliberately going off to dreamland unprotected in the middle of a branch of hostile hunter seems like a plan dreamed up by our worst enemies. Now, this is so true. I say this because most of my life, I have been getting dreams and some of them are scary. For example, last night I dreamt that one my male cousins was hunting me down to kill me. It was very strange!
Nevertheless, Medina explains that the brain does not sleep at all. Rather, it is almost unbelievably active during “rest”, with legions of neurons crackling electrical commands to one another in constantly shifting, extremely active patterns. He added that the only time you can observe a real resting period for the brain – where the amount of energy consumed in less than during a similar awake period – is during the phase called non-REM sleep, which takes up 20 percent of the total sleep cycle.
Medina states that after all the centuries of experience with sleep, we still do not know how much sleep people actually need. He explains that sleep schedules are unbelievably dynamic. He added that they change with age. They change with gender. They change depending upon whether or not you are pregnant, and whether or not you are going through puberty.
At the end of the day, sleep loss takes a toll on the body and this is one reason I could think of why we must try to get as much sleep as we can before we all end up like Peter Tripp.
Brain Rules
Sleep
Summary
In the chapter Sleep, John Medina explains essentially the science behind sleeping or better what makes us sleep. For instance, he denominates this particular phenomenon as a battlefield which actually two bands constantly battle between each other. The first one is called the circadian arousal system or process C which make people stay awake. On the other hand, there is the homeostatic sleep drive or process S which makes people to sleep. This is a never ending battle where there is no a definitely winner because if there is one, it will break up the cyclical system of sleeping itself. Also, this cycle can be represented by just partially winner, for example, if we are sleeping that means process S is winning, however, when we wake up process C is winning, and so on. In addition, he mentions that each person has internal clock in his/her brain that regulates the schedule of sleeping, and he categorizes in people that are larks, owls, and hummingbirds. First, Larks are people who perform activities in the morning such as 6 am, and go to sleep really early such as 9 pm. Another feature is that they don’t need an alarm to wake up. Second, there is also what Medina called owls whose main feature is that they are more productive at night and dinner is a big deal. Finally, there are the hummingbirds which are most of the people whose possess a more regulated sleep schedule. In addition, Medina stresses that taking a nap actually is a normal human behavior because during the afternoon the two forces that battle each other are more active, and this causes us to yawn and make us sleepy. Furthermore, he mentions that there is no a correct number of hours that people should sleeping because everybody has a different schedule and rhythms, however, he says that at least 7 hours of sleep should be fine in order to be recovered from a long day of work. In summary, Medina explains about pretty everything about the science of sleeping.
Justin Echevarria
Sleep, everyone does it and everyone needs it. So why do people need sleep? It is pretty simple people need rest for the body to function, but most people believe when you are sleeping the brain isn’t functioning. As John Medina stated most people believe as they are sleeping their brains aren’t really functioning. In fact they are studies that prove the human brain is functioning while sleep process, in fact the brain is more active while you are sleeping than you are awake. Medina explains what will happen if people don’t sleep, why people sleep, and what causes people to sleep.
Medina’s writing style is informational in every chapter he writes it’s about a specific topic about the brains senses. Information he provides I’ve already learned in previous classes of psychology, but honestly I feel as if he is explaining the brain in more detailed manner and seems more interesting.
Zahirah Hutton
ENG 1101
3/2/15
Summary: Brain Rules/ Sleep
This chapter I was totally intrigued by because man and sleep are like the best of friends. Not only is sleep wonderful but it is also essential to everyday activities. When your mind and body is untested it takes a toll on you mental & physical movements. The body can’t fully function to its full potential with out a maximum of 8 hours of pure unadulterated rest. When jockey Peter Tripp decided to stay away for 200 hours he was a prime example of what happens to a body that’s not well rested over periods of time. You hallucinate get snappy and many other things like you ability to answer little questions. Sleep deprivation is a case that most people deal with voluntarily or involuntary and they need to start to understand the risk that comes with lack of sleep over a period of time.
John Medina calls his seventh rule “Sleep”. Sleeping well is one of the most important things to survive; also, it keeps us active and energetic. Sleep opens up our minds and make us more efficient at school, work or simply in our daily activities. Medina explains widely the things that happen in our brains while we are asleep and based on some experiments he tell us in his chapter that the absence of sleep for many consecutive days could became us irritable, forgetful, very tired, nauseous and paranoid. I do not even imagine myself without sleeping so many days, I think I wouldn’t be able to do anything, that’s why I totally agree with the author. Even when we are asleep our brains do not stop working, our brain’s neurons keep rhythmical activity, maybe is replaying all the things we have done in the day or analyzing why those things happened. Medina’s says that if you take an afternoon nap you will be more productive and it will improve your performance too. This is very necessary to everyone but because we are living stressful and very busy lives we do not even have time to take a nap, most of the people prefer to drink or eat something that improves their energy than go to sleep. We need at least 7-8 hour of sleep to perform better and be mentally alert. In addition, this chapter explain us that the loss of sleep hurts attention, logical reasoning, working memory, motor dexterity and executive function.