1.
David Randall became interested in the world of sleep after having a mishap on his own. While sleep walking one night he found himself lying on the hardwood floor of his hallway after running into a wall. The sleep specialist he spoke with afterwards had given him no straight answer and was completely unsure what could have caused David's behavior during his random mishap in the hallway. This book is separated into 13 chapters, which then break down individual and separate topics, starting with the basics such as the five stages of sleep and REM. David goes into great depth about the benefits of sleep. Sleep is instrumental in such things as muscle regeneration, long-term memory formation, skills acquisition, problem-solving, emotional control, and creativity. We benefit greatly from sleep but on the other side of the spectrum sleep deprivation can cause harmful effects on our body. We learn that our natural sleeping patterns are based off of our circadian clocks, and many of our routines in daily life go against our bodies natural time schedule and that can have a negative effect on wakefulness. Many organizations have begun to adjust our time schedules to be sure we are better rested and alert while on the job, even some high schools have pushed back their starting time due to research correlating the amount of sleep a student receives at night and their grades. David also included tidbits on sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, sleep walking, talking, and acting, and insomnia. There are several ways to improve our sleep other than with pills or therapy, such as avoiding coffee, alcohol, and bright lights before bed, getting regular exercise, turning down your room temperature before bedtime and practicing meditation and focusing on breathing techniques to help us fall asleep.
2.
Passage #1: Consider, for a moment, how absurd the whole idea of falling asleep is in a world of finite resources where living things resort to eating each other to survive. A sleeping animal must lie still for long stretches at a time, all but inviting predators to make it dinner (and not in a good way). Yet whatever sleep does is so important that evolution goes out of its way to make it possible. The need to sleep interferes with other more biologically pressing needs, such as procreating, finding and gathering food, building shelter, and anything else you might do to ensure that your genetic line lives on. Sleep is so important, yet so poorly misunderstood, that it let one biologist to say, "If sleep doesn't serve an absolutely vital function, it is the greatest mistake evolution ever made.: That function is still a mystery. It would be nice to say that sleep is nothing more than the time when a body rests, but that wouldn't be quite right either. Humans need roughly one hour of sleep for every two hours they are awake, and the body innately knows when the ration becomes out of whack. Each hour of missed sleep one night will result in deeper sleep the next, until the body's sleep debt is wiped. (Pages 17-19)
Passage #2: The teenage body hasn't kept up with the demands placed on it. A study by researchers at the University of Kentucky found that the average high school senior sleeps only six and a half hours each night, about three-fourths of what sleep researchers consider necessary for adolescents. Many students find themselves falling asleep in 7:00 am classes no matter how early they try to go to sleep the night before. In one telling example of the impact of early start time, a researcher found that most students earned higher grades that started later in the day for the simple reason that they were more likely to stay awake for the entire lesson. The lack of sleep affects the teenage brain in similar ways to the adult brain, only more so. Chronic sleep deprivation in adolescents diminishes the brains ability to learn new information, and can lead to emotional issues like depression and aggression. (Pages 203-204)
Passage #3: Looking at history of a single person's dreams reveals that the brain doesn't construct such clear metaphors, says William Domhoff. Instead dreams are filled with images and settings that are familiar. Sigmond Freud, on the other hand, thought that a stranger dream signified a deeper meaning. In The Interpretation of Dreams, he argued that "dreams are often their most profound when they seem the most crazy" because they were more densely packed with symbols to unlock. (Page 99)
3.
Question #1: How do your sleeping habits and patterns contribute to your potential?
Question #2: How does sleep effect our brain's performance?
Question #3: Where are dreams produced and what controls the content of our dreams?
Question #4: Why is sleep an essential part of life even through evolution?
Question #5: What benefits does sleep give to our body?
4.
Randall, David. Dreamland. New York: W.W.Norton &, n.d. Print
5.
This book is divided into 13 chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of sleep. Within my research I plan to base each of my tasks from one of the aspects included in to book and expand my research to gather a greater source of knowledge for each individual topic. One that I am most particularly interested in, is the science behind dreaming. This book fits in wonderfully with the topic I have chosen because it has given me a base to take my research in the direction I choose, such as studying sleep disorders, dream analysis, the benefits of sleep for our body and brain, and one related close to home, is current research involving high school students and grade correlation based on the amount of sleep each student receives on average a night.
