REM is a period for the brain to restore, cleaning out all the “junk mail” that has accumulated, and allowing the capture of memories and learning. Growth hormone is released during NREM, encouraging muscle and tissue repair, and stimulating the immune system to defend against infections. It is clear that the night-time molecular processing – a sort of brain housekeeping shift – benefits our cognitive ability as well as wellbeing so that we wake refreshed in both cell and spirit.īut how do we sleep? What happens when we close our eyes and drift away to the Land of Nod? Traditionally, says Professor Horne, sleep has been analysed by charting it in four stages, which cover the changes in our brainwaves, measurable by EEG – electroencephalography, the technique that records the brain’s electrical activity – and including time when we are in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and in non-REM (NREM) sleep. “We need sleep – it cleans up the brain.” “Sleep changes the cellular structure of the brain,” says Dr Maiken Nedergaard, a leader of the study, which was published last October in the journal Science. For example, research from the Centre for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York has demonstrated for the first time that the space between brain cells may increase during sleep, allowing the brain to flush out toxins that build up during waking hours. Recent research has challenged theories about why we sleep. “Yet our sleeping circumstances are better than ever, and we understand more and more about the nature and purpose of sleeping and dreaming.” “The more people worry about sleep, the more they worry and so sleep less,” says Jim Horne, professor of psychophysiology at the University of Loughborough, who is one of the UK’s leading sleep experts and author of Sleepfaring. Yet to hear us talk, it would seem no one ever gets enough shut-eye.
With our electric blankets, pocket-sprung mattresses and draft-proof bedrooms, we sleep better in the 21st century than ever before.
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