sleep

—sleepful, adj. —sleeplike, adj.

/sleep/, v., slept, sleeping, n.

v.i.

1. to take the rest afforded by a suspension of voluntary bodily functions and the natural suspension, complete or partial, of consciousness; cease being awake.

2. Bot. to assume, esp. at night, a state similar to the sleep of animals, marked by closing of petals, leaves, etc.

3. to be dormant, quiescent, or inactive, as faculties.

4. to be careless or unalert; allow one's alertness, vigilance, or attentiveness to lie dormant: While England slept, Germany prepared for war.

5. to lie in death: They are sleeping in their tombs.

v.t.

6. to take rest in (a specified kind of sleep): He slept the sleep of the innocent.

7. to accommodate for sleeping; have sleeping accommodations for: This trailer sleeps three people.

8. to spend or pass in sleep (usually fol. by away or out): to sleep the day away.

9. to recover from the effects of (a headache, hangover, etc.) by sleeping (usually fol. by off or away).

10. sleep around, Informal. to have sexual relations with many partners, esp. in a casual way; be sexually promiscuous.

11. sleep in,

a. (esp. of domestic help) to sleep where one is employed.

b. to sleep beyond one's usual time of arising.

12. sleep on, to postpone making a decision about for at least a day: to sleep on a proposal till the end of the week.

13. sleep out,

a. (esp. of domestic help) to sleep away from one's place of employment.

b. Chiefly Northern U.S. to sleep away from one's home.

c. to sleep outdoors.

14. sleep over, to spend one or more nights in a place other than one's own home: Two friends will sleep over this weekend.

15. sleep together, to be sexual partners; have a sexual relationship.

16. sleep with, to have sexual relations with.

n.

17. the state of a person, animal, or plant that sleeps.

18. a period of sleeping: a brief sleep.

19. dormancy or inactivity.

20. the repose of death.

21. sleeper (def. 10).

22. put to sleep, to put (an animal) to death in a humane way: to put a sick old dog to sleep.

[bef. 900; (n.) ME; OE slep (Anglian), slaep, slap; c. D slaap, G Schlaf, Goth sleps; (v.) ME slepen, OE slepan, slaepan, slapan, c. OS slapan, Goth slepan]

Syn. 1. slumber, nap, drowse, doze. 17. rest, repose. 18. nap.

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Natural periodic suspension of consciousness during which the powers of the body are restored.

Humans normally sleep at night, whereas nocturnal species sleep during the day. The average human sleep requirement is about 7.5 hours. Sleep is divided into two main types, REM (rapid-eye-movement) and NREM (non-REM); each recurs cyclically several times during a normal period of sleep. REM sleep is characterized by increased neuronal activity of the forebrain and midbrain, by depressed muscle tone, and by dreaming (see dream), rapid eye movements, and vascular congestion of the sex organs. NREM sleep is divided into four stages, the last of which is the deep, restorative, quiet sleep commonly associated with "a good night's rest." See also insomnia, narcolepsy.

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Introduction

      a normal, easily reversible, recurrent, and spontaneous state of decreased and less-efficient responsiveness to external stimulation. The state contrasts with that of wakefulness, in which there is an enhanced potential for sensitivity and an efficient responsiveness to external stimuli. The sleep-wakefulness alternation is the most striking manifestation in higher vertebrates of the more general phenomenon of periodicity in the activity or responsivity of living tissue.

      There is no single, perfectly reliable criterion of sleep. Sleep is defined by the convergence of observations satisfying several different motor, sensory, and physiological criteria. Occasionally, one or more of these criteria may be absent during sleep or present during wakefulness, but even in such cases there usually is little difficulty in achieving agreement among observers in the discrimination between the two behavioral states.

The nature of sleep

      Sleep usually requires the presence of flaccid or relaxed skeletal muscles (muscle system, human) and the absence of the overt, goal-directed behaviour of which the waking organism is capable. Part of the recurring fascination with sleep talking and sleepwalking stems from their apparent violation of this latter criterion. Were these phenomena continuous rather than intermittent during a behavioral state, it is indeed questionable whether the designation “sleep” would continue to be appropriate. The characteristic posture associated with sleep in humans and in many but not all other animals is that of horizontal repose. The relaxation of the skeletal muscles in this posture and its implication of a more passive role toward the environment are symptomatic of sleep.

      Indicative of the decreased sensitivity of the human sleeper to his external environment are the typical closed eyelids (or the functional blindness associated with sleep while the eyes are open) and the presleep activities that include seeking surroundings characterized by reduced or monotonous levels of sensory stimulation. Three additional criteria—reversibility, recurrence, and spontaneity—distinguish the insensitivity of sleep from that of other states. Compared with that of hibernation or coma, the insensitivity of sleep is more easily reversible. Although the occurrence of sleep is not perfectly regular under all conditions, it is at least partially predictable from a knowledge of the duration of prior sleep periods and of the intervals between periods of sleep, and, although the onset of sleep may be facilitated by a variety of environmental or chemical means, sleep states are not thought of as being absolutely dependent upon such manipulations.

      In experimental studies, both with subhuman vertebrates and with humans, sleep also has been defined in terms of physiological variables generally associated with recurring periods of inactivity identified behaviorally as sleep. For example, the typical presence of certain electroencephalogram (electroencephalography) (EEG) patterns ( brain patterns of electrical activity as recorded in tracings) with behavioral sleep has led to the designation of such patterns as “signs” of sleep. Conversely, in the absence of such signs (as, for example, in a hypnotic trance), it is felt that true sleep is absent. Such signs as are now employed, however, are not invariably discriminating of the behavioral states of sleep and wakefulness. Advances in the technology of animal experimentation have made it possible to extend the physiological approach from externally measurable manifestations of sleep such as the EEG to the underlying neural (nerve) mechanisms presumably responsible for such manifestations. As a result, it may finally become possible to identify structures or functions that are invariably related to behavioral sleep and to trace the evolution of sleep through comparative anatomic and physiological studies of structures found to be critical in the maintenance of sleep behaviour in the higher vertebrates.

      In addition to the behavioral and physiological criteria already mentioned, subjective experience (in the case of the self) and verbal reports of such experience (in the case of others) are used at the human level to define sleep. Upon being alerted, one may feel or say, “I was asleep just then,” and such judgments ordinarily are accepted as evidence for identifying a prearousal state as sleep, but such subjective evidence can be at variance with behaviouristic classifications of sleep.

      More generally, problems in defining sleep arise when evidence for one or more of the several criteria of sleep is lacking or when the evidence generated by available criteria is inconsistent. Do subhuman species sleep? Other mammalian species whose EEG and other physiological correlates are akin to those observed in human sleep demonstrate recurring, spontaneous, and reversible periods of inactivity and decreased critical reactivity. There is general acceptance of the designation of such states as sleep. As one descends the evolutionary scale below the birds and reptiles, however, and such criteria are successively less well satisfied, the unequivocal identification of sleep becomes more difficult. Bullfrogs (bullfrog) (Rana catesbeiana), for example, seem not to fulfill sensory threshold criteria of sleep during resting states. Tree frogs (tree frog) (genus Hyla), on the other hand, show diminished sensitivity as they move from a state of behavioral activity to one of rest. Yet the EEGs of the alert rest of the bullfrog and the sleeplike rest of the tree frog are the same. There are parallel problems in defining sleep at different stages in the development of a single individual. At full-term birth in the human, for instance, a convergence of nonsubjective criteria clearly seems to justify the identification of periods of sleep, but it is more difficult to justify the attribution of sleep to the human fetus.

      Problems in defining sleep may arise from the effects of artificial manipulation. For example, the EEG patterns commonly used as signs of sleep can be induced in an otherwise waking organism by the administration of certain drugs. Sometimes, also, there is conflicting evidence: a person who is “awakened” from a spontaneously assumed state of immobility with all the EEG criteria of sleep may claim that he had been awake prior to this event. In such troublesome cases and more generally, it is becoming common to qualify attributions of sleep with the criteria upon which such attributions rest—e.g., “behavioral sleep,” “physiological sleep,” or “self-described sleep.” Such terminology accurately reflects both the multiplicity of criteria available for the identification of sleep and the possibility that these criteria may not always agree with one another.

Developmental patterns of sleep and wakefulness

      How much sleep does a person need? While the physiological bases of the need for sleep remain conjectural, rendering definitive answers to this question impossible, much evidence has been gathered on how much sleep people do in fact obtain. Perhaps the most important conclusion to be drawn from this evidence is that there is great variability between individuals in total sleep time. For adults, anything between 6 and 9 hours of sleep as a nightly average is not unusual, and 7¹/₂ hours probably best expresses the norm. Such norms, of course, inevitably vary with the criteria of sleep employed. The most-precise and reliable figures on sleep time, including those cited here, come from studies in sleep laboratories, where EEG criteria are employed.

      Age (human aging) consistently has been associated with the varying amount, quality, and patterning of electrophysiologically defined sleep. The newborn infant (infancy) may spend an average of about 16 hours of each 24-hour period in sleep, although there is wide variability between individual babies. During the first year of life, total sleep time drops sharply; by two years of age, it may range from 9 to 12 hours. Decreases to approximately 6 hours have been observed among the elderly.

      As will be elaborated below, EEG sleep studies have indicated that sleep can be considered to consist of several different stages. Developmental changes in the relative proportion of sleep time spent in these sleep stages are as striking as age-related changes in total sleep time. For example, the newborn infant may spend 50 percent of total sleep time in a stage of EEG sleep that is accompanied by intermittent bursts of rapid eye movements (REMs) indicative of a type of sleep that in some respects bears more resemblance to wakefulness than to other forms of sleep (see below Rapid eye movement sleep (sleep)), while the comparable figure for adults is approximately 25 percent and for the elderly is less than 20 percent. There is also a decline with age of EEG stage 4 (deep slumber).

      Sleep patterning consists of (1) the temporal spacing of sleep and wakefulness within a 24-hour period and (2) the ordering of different sleep stages within a given sleep period. In both senses there are major developmental changes in the patterning of sleep. In alternations between sleep and wakefulness, there is a developmental shift from polyphasic sleep to monophasic sleep (i.e., from intermittent to uninterrupted sleep). At birth there may be five or six periods of sleep per day alternating with a like number of waking periods. With the dropping of nocturnal feedings in infancy and of morning and afternoon naps in childhood, there is an increasing tendency to the concentration of sleep in one long nocturnal period. The trend to monophasic sleep probably reflects some blend of the effects of maturing and of pressures from a culture geared to daytime activity and nocturnal rest. Among the elderly there may be a partial return to the polyphasic sleep pattern of infancy and early childhood, namely, more-frequent daytime napping and less-extensive periods of nocturnal sleep because of the loss of zeitgebers, or time markers that provide cues. These include the need to arise at a set time for work or to get children off to school. Significant developmental effects also have been observed in spacing of stages within sleep. In the adult, REM sleep rarely occurs at sleep onset, while, in newborn infants, sleep-onset REM sleep is typical.

      It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the various age-related changes in sleep behaviour for a general theory of sleep. In the search for the functional significance of sleep or of particular stages of sleep, the shifts in sleep variables can be linked with variations in waking developmental needs, the total capacities of the individual, and environmental demands. It has been suggested, for instance, that the high frequency and priority in the night of REM sleep in the newborn infant may reflect a need for stimulation from within to permit orderly maturation of the central nervous system (CNS; see nervous system, human). Another interpretation of age-related changes in REM sleep stresses its possible role in processing new information, the rate of acquisition for which is assumed to be relatively high in childhood but reduced in old age. As these views illustrate, developmental changes in the electrophysiology of sleep are germane not only to sleep but also to the role of CNS development in behavioral adaptation.

Psychophysiological variations in sleep

      That there are different kinds of sleep has long been recognized. In everyday discourse there is talk of “good” sleep or “poor” sleep, of “light” sleep and “deep” sleep; yet not until the second half of the 20th century did scientists pay much attention to qualitative variations within sleep. Sleep was formerly conceptualized by scientists as a unitary state of passive recuperation. Revolutionary changes have occurred in scientific thinking about sleep, the most important of which has been increased sensitivity to its heterogeneity.

      This revolution may be traced back to the discovery of sleep characterized by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, first reported by the physiologists Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman in 1953. REM sleep proved to have characteristics quite at variance with the prevailing model of sleep as recuperative deactivation of the central nervous system. Various central and autonomic nervous system measurements seemed to show that the REM stage of sleep is more nearly like activated wakefulness than it is like other sleep. It now has become conventional to consider REM (“paradoxical”) and non-REM (NREM or “orthodox”) sleep as qualitatively different. Thus, the earlier assumption that sleep is a unitary and passive state has yielded to the viewpoint that there are two different kinds of sleep, a relatively deactivated NREM phase and an activated REM phase.

Non-rapid eye movement sleep

      NREM sleep itself is conventionally subdivided into several different stages on the basis of EEG criteria. In the adult, stage 1 is observed at sleep onset or after momentary arousals during the night and is defined as a low-voltage mixed-frequency EEG tracing with a considerable representation of theta-wave (four to seven hertz, or cycles per second) activity. Stage 2 is a relatively low-voltage EEG tracing characterized by intermittent, short sequences of waves of 12–14 hertz (“sleep spindles”) and by formations called K-complexes—biphasic wave forms that can be induced by external stimulation, as by a sound, but that also occur spontaneously during sleep. Stages 3 and 4 consist of relatively high-voltage (more than 50-microvolt) EEG tracings with a predominance of delta-wave (one to two hertz) activity; the distinction between the two stages is based on an arbitrary criterion of amount of delta-wave activity, with greater amounts classified as stage 4. Unlike the basic distinction between NREM and REM, differences between NREM sleep stages generally are regarded as quantitative rather than qualitative.

      The EEG patterns of NREM sleep, particularly of stages 3 and 4 (tracings of slower frequency and higher amplitude), are those associated in other circumstances with decreased vigilance. Furthermore, after the transition from wakefulness to NREM sleep, most functions of the autonomic nervous system decrease their rate of activity and their moment-to-moment variability. Thus, NREM sleep is the kind of seemingly restful state that appears capable of supporting the recuperative functions assigned to sleep. There are in fact several lines of evidence suggesting such functions for NREM stage 4: (1) increases in such sleep, in both humans and laboratory animals, observed after physical exercise; (2) the concentration of such sleep in the early portion of the sleep period (i.e., immediately after wakeful states of activity) in humans; and (3) the relatively high priority that such sleep has among humans in “recovery” sleep following abnormally extended periods of wakefulness.

Rapid eye movement sleep

      REM sleep is a state of diffuse bodily activation. Its EEG patterns (tracings of faster frequency and lower amplitude than in NREM stages 2–4) are at least superficially similar to those of wakefulness. Most autonomic variables exhibit relatively high rates of activity and variability during REM sleep; for example, there are higher heart and respiration rates and more short-term variability in these rates than in NREM sleep, increased blood pressure, and, in males, full or partial penile erection. In addition, REM sleep is accompanied by a relatively low rate of gross body motility, but with some periodic twitching of the muscles of the face and extremities, relatively high levels of oxygen consumption by the brain, increased cerebral blood flow, and higher brain temperature. An even more impressive demonstration of the activation of REM sleep is to be found in the firing rates of individual cerebral neurons (neuron), or nerve cells, in experimental animals: during REM sleep such rates exceed those of NREM sleep and often equal or surpass those of wakefulness. Another distinguishing feature of REM sleep of course is the intermittent appearance of bursts of rapid eye movements, whence the term is derived.

      For both humans and animals, REM sleep is now defined by the concurrence of three events: low-voltage, mixed-frequency EEG; intermittent REMs; and suppressed tonus of the muscles of the facial region (i.e., suppression of the continuous slight tension otherwise normally present). This decrease in muscle tonus and a similarly observed suppression of spinal reflexes are indicative of heightened motor inhibition during REM sleep. Animal studies have identified the locus ceruleus, in the pons, as the probable source of this inhibition. (The pons is in the brain stem, directly above the medulla oblongata; the locus ceruleus borders on the brain cavity known as the fourth ventricle.) When this structure is surgically destroyed in experimental animals, they periodically engage in active, apparently goal-directed behaviour during REM sleep, although they still show the unresponsivity to external stimulation characteristic of the stage. It has been suggested that such behaviour may be the acting out of the hallucinations (hallucination) of a dream.

      An important theoretical distinction is that between REM sleep phenomena that are continuous and those that are intermittent. Tonic (continuous) characteristics of REM sleep include the low-voltage EEG and the suppressed muscle tonus; intermittent events in REM sleep include the REMs themselves and, as observed in the cat, spikelike electrical activity in those parts of the brain concerned with vision and in other parts of the cerebral cortex. The various intermittent events of REM sleep tend to occur together, and it seems to be these moments of intermittent activation that are responsible for much of the difference between REM sleep and NREM sleep. The spiking mentioned is observed occasionally in NREM sleep, an occurrence that has been interpreted by some theorists as suggesting that REM sleep is not qualitatively unique in its capacity to support intermittent activation and that the differences between NREM and REM sleep may be less striking than the differences in eye movement and EEG have indicated.

Sequences of NREM and REM sleep

      The usual temporal progression of the two kinds of sleep in the adult human is for a period of approximately 70–90 minutes of NREM sleep (the stages being ordered 1–2–3–4–3–2) to precede the first period of REM sleep, which may last from approximately 5 to 15 minutes. NREM-REM cycles of roughly equivalent total duration then recur through the night, with the REM portion lengthening somewhat and the NREM portion shrinking correspondingly as sleep continues. Approximately 25 percent of total accumulated sleep is spent in REM sleep and 75 percent in NREM sleep. Most of the latter is EEG stage 2. The high proportion of stage 2 NREM sleep is attributable to the loss of stages 3 and 4 in the NREM portion of the NREM-REM cycles after the first two or three.

Light and deep sleep

      Which of the various NREM stages is light sleep and which is deep sleep? The criteria used to establish sleep depth are the same as those used to distinguish sleep from wakefulness. In terms of motor behaviour, motility decreases (depth increases) from stages 1 through 4. By criteria of sensory responsivity, thresholds generally increase (sleep deepens) from stages 1 through 4. By most physiological criteria, NREM stages 3 and 4 are particularly deactivated (deep). Thus, gradations within NREM sleep do seem fairly consistent, with a continuum extending from the “lightest” stage 1 to the “deepest” stage 4.

      Relative to NREM sleep, is REM sleep light or deep? The answer seems to be that by some criteria REM sleep is light and by others it is deep. For example, in terms of muscle tone, which is at its lowest point during REM sleep, it is deep. In terms of its increased rates of intermittent fine body movements, REM sleep would have to be considered light. Arousal thresholds during REM sleep are variable, apparently as a function of the meaningfulness of the stimulus (and of the possibility of its incorporation into an ongoing dream sequence). With a meaningful stimulus (e.g., one that cannot be ignored with impunity), the capacity for responsivity can be demonstrated to be roughly equivalent to that of “light” NREM sleep (stages 1 and 2). With a stimulus having no particular significance to the sleeper, thresholds can be rather high. The discrepancy between these two conditions suggests an active shutting out of irrelevant stimuli during REM sleep. By most physiological criteria related to the autonomic and central nervous systems, REM sleep clearly is more like wakefulness than like NREM sleep, but drugs that cause arousal in wakefulness, such as amphetamine, suppress REM sleep. In terms of subjective response, recently awakened sleepers often describe REM sleep as having been “deep” and NREM sleep as having been “light.” The subjectively felt depth of REM sleep may reflect the immersion of the sleeper in the vivid dream experiences of this stage.

      Thus, as was true in defining sleep itself, there are difficulties in achieving unequivocal definitions of sleep depth. Several different criteria may be employed, and they are not always in agreement. REM sleep is particularly difficult to classify along any continuum of sleep depth. The current tendency is to consider it a unique state, sharing properties of both light and deep sleep. The fact that selective deprivation of REM sleep (elaborated below) results in a selective increase in such sleep on recovery nights is consistent with this view of REM sleep as unique.

Autonomic variables

      Some autonomic physiological variables have a characteristic pattern relating their activity to cumulative sleep time, without respect to whether it is REM or NREM sleep. These variables are viewed by some authorities as incidental rather than essential features of the state of sleep, which is conceived in terms of the central nervous system. Such variables presumably reflect constant or slowly changing features of both kinds of sleep, such as the cumulative effects of immobility and of relaxation of skeletal muscles on metabolic (metabolism) processes. Body temperature, for example, drops during the early hours of sleep, reaching a low point after five or six hours, then rises toward the morning awakening.

Behavioral variables

      Behaviorally, it has been shown that already-established motor responses can be evoked in all stages of sleep, but it has proved much more difficult to demonstrate that new responses can be acquired during sleep. When EEG criteria of sleep are employed, it appears that “sleep learning” of verbal material takes place only to the degree that the person being tested is partially awake during the presentation of the stimuli. Another line of behavioral study is the observation of spontaneously occurring integrated behaviour patterns, such as walking and talking during sleep. In keeping with the idea of a heightened tonic (continuous) motor inhibition during REM sleep but contrary to the idea that such behaviour is an acting out of especially vivid dream experiences or a substitute for them, sleep talking occurs primarily in NREM sleep and sleepwalking exclusively in NREM sleep. Talking in one's sleep is particularly characteristic of lighter NREM sleep (stage 2), while sleepwalking is initiated from deeper NREM sleep (stage 4). Episodes of NREM sleepwalking generally do not seem to be associated with any remembered dreams, nor is NREM sleep talking consistently associated with reported dreams of appropriate content.

Effects of sleep deprivation

      One time-honoured approach to determining the function of an organ or process is to deprive an organism of the organ or process. In the case of sleep, the deprivation approach to function has been applied—both experimentally and naturalistically—to sleep as a unitary state (general sleep deprivation) and, experimentally only, to particular kinds of sleep (selective sleep deprivation). General sleep deprivation may be either total (e.g., a person has had no sleep at all for a period of days) or partial (e.g., over a period a person obtains only three or four hours of sleep per night). The method of general deprivation studies is enforced wakefulness. Selective deprivation has been reported for two stages of sleep: stage 4 of NREM sleep and REM sleep. Both typically occur after the appearance of other sleep stages, REM sleep after all four NREM stages and stage 4 after the lighter NREM stages. The general idea of selective deprivation studies is to allow the sleeper to have natural sleep until the point at which he enters the stage to be deprived and then to prevent the stage, either by experimental awakening or by other manipulations such as application of a mildly noxious stimulus or prior administration of a drug known to suppress it. The hope is that total sleep time will not be altered but that increased occurrence of some other stage will substitute for the loss of the one selectively eliminated.

General sleep deprivation

      On a three-hour sleep schedule, partial deprivation does not reproduce, in miniaturized form, the same relative distribution of sleep patterns achieved in a seven- or eight-hour sleep period. Some increase is observed in absolute amounts of REM sleep during the three-hour sleep period as compared with the first three hours of normal sleep, and there also is a significant increase in the amount of stage 4 of NREM sleep. Lighter NREM sleep (e.g., stage 2) seems to have a particularly low priority under partial sleep deprivation. Although the REM sleep percentage increases somewhat under partial deprivation, the person is still far from achieving his usual quota in absolute minutes of sleep time. On uninterrupted recovery nights following the termination of the deprivation, there is more REM sleep than there was before the deprivation. This change is viewed as a compensatory “rebound” of REM sleep such that at least some of the quota is made up. Most if not all of the nightly quota of stage 4 of NREM sleep can be achieved on a three-hour nightly schedule. Because partial deprivation on a three-hour nightly regimen also tends to be selective deprivation (the person receives most of his quota of stage 4 NREM sleep but relatively little of his quota of REM sleep), the behavioral effects of such deprivation may be relevant to the question of the adaptive functions served by REM sleep. One study has reported no effects from deprivation of REM sleep on the capacity for performance on a perceptual-discrimination task but decreased motivation. When a schedule of partial deprivation began to interfere with the routine accumulation of stage 4 (i.e., less than three hours of sleep per night), on the other hand, the capacity for performance seemed to be adversely affected.

      In view of several obvious practical considerations, many general deprivation studies have used animals rather than humans as experimental subjects. Waking effects routinely observed in these studies have been of deteriorated physiological functioning, sometimes including actual tissue damage. Long-term sleep deprivation in the rat (6 to 33 days), accomplished by enforced locomotion of both experimental and control animals but timed to coincide with any sleep of the experimental animals, has been shown to result in severe debilitation and death of the experimental but not the control animals. This supports the view that sleep serves a vital physiological function. There is some suggestion that age is related to sensitivity to the effects of deprivation, younger organisms proving more capable of withstanding the stress than mature ones.

      Among human subjects, the champion nonsleeper apparently was a 17-year-old student who voluntarily undertook a 264-hour sleep-deprivation experiment. Effects noted during the deprivation period included irritability, blurred vision, slurring of speech, memory lapses, and confusion concerning his identity. No long-term (i.e., postrecovery) effects were observed on either his personality or his intellect. More generally, although brief hallucinations and easily controlled episodes of bizarre behaviour have been observed after 5 to 10 days of continuous sleep deprivation, these symptoms do not occur in most subjects and thus offer little support to the hypothesis that sleep loss induces psychosis. In any event, these symptoms rarely persist beyond the period of sleep that follows the period of deprivation. When inappropriate behaviour does persist, it generally seems to be in persons known to have a tendency toward such behaviour. Generally, upon investigation, injury to the nervous system has not been discovered in persons who have been deprived of sleep for many days. This result must be understood in the context of the limited duration of these studies and should not be interpreted as indicating that sleep loss is either safe or desirable. The short-term effects observed with the student mentioned are typical and are of the sort that, in the absence of the continuous monitoring his vigil received, might well have endangered his health and safety.

      Other commonly observed behavioral effects during total sleep deprivation include fatigue, inability to concentrate, and visual or tactile illusions (illusion) and hallucinations. These effects generally become intensified with increased loss of sleep, but they also wax and wane in a cyclic fashion in line with 24-hour fluctuations in EEG alpha-wave (8 to 12 hertz) phenomena and with body temperature, becoming most acute in the early morning hours. Changes in intellectual performance during moderate sleep loss can to a certain extent be compensated for by increased effort and motivation. In general, tasks that are work paced (the subject must respond at a particular instant of time not of his own choice) tend to be affected more adversely than tasks that are self-paced. Errors of omission are common with the former kind of task and are thought to be associated with “microsleep”—momentary lapses into sleep. Changes in body chemistry and in workings of the autonomic nervous system sometimes have been noted during deprivation, but it has proved difficult to establish either consistent patterning in such effects or whether they should be attributed to sleep loss per se or to the stress or other incidental features of the deprivation manipulation. In general, involuntary bodily functions seem relatively more impervious to effects of short-term deprivation than are adaptive, or voluntary, ones. The length of the first recovery sleep session for the student mentioned above, following his 264 hours of wakefulness, was slightly less than 15 hours. His sleep demonstrated increased amounts of both stage 4 NREM and REM sleep.

Selective sleep deprivation

      Studies of selective sleep deprivation have confirmed the attribution of need for both stage 4 NREM and REM sleep, because an increasing number of experimental arousals are required each night to suppress both stage 4 and REM sleep on successive nights of deprivation and because both show a clear rebound effect following deprivation. Rebound from stage 4 NREM-sleep deprivation occurs only on the night following termination of the deprivation regardless of the length of the deprivation, whereas the duration of the rebound effect following REM-sleep deprivation is related to the length of the prior deprivation. Little is known of the consequences of stage 4 deprivation.

      Particular interest has attached to the selective deprivation of REM sleep, partly because of its unique and somewhat puzzling properties as an activated state of sleep and partly because of the association of this stage with vivid dreaming. REM-sleep-deprivation studies once were considered also to be “dream-deprivation” studies. This psychological view of REM-sleep deprivation has become less pervasive since the experimental demonstration of the occurrence of dreaming during NREM-sleep stages, and because, contrary to the Freudian position that the dream is an essential safety valve for the release of emotional tensions, it has become evident that REM-sleep deprivation is not psychologically disruptive and may in fact be helpful in treating depression. REM-sleep-deprivation studies have focused more upon the presumed functions of the REM state than upon those of the vivid dreams that accompany it. The evidence from these studies has proved to be partially supportive of a number of different theoretical positions concerning REM sleep. Some animal studies have reported deleterious effects of REM-sleep deprivation on learning or other cognitive tasks (i.e., tasks concerned with thinking, remembering, perceiving, and the like), in line with the view that cognitive processing may be one function of REM sleep. Other animal studies have shown heightened levels of sexuality and aggressiveness after a period of deprivation, suggesting a drive-regulative function for REM sleep. Other observations suggest increased sensitivity of the central nervous system to auditory stimuli and to electroconvulsive shock following deprivation, as might have been predicted from the theory that REM sleep somehow serves to maintain CNS integrity.

      Although there is a need for REM sleep, apparently it is not absolute. Animals have been deprived of REM sleep for as long as two months without showing behavioral or physiological evidence of injury. Several problems arise, however, in connection with the methods of most REM-sleep-deprivation studies. Controls for factors such as stress, sleep interruption, and total sleep time are difficult to manage. Thus, it is unclear whether observed effects of REM-sleep deprivation are the result of REM-sleep loss or the result of such factors as stress and general sleep loss. It also is unclear whether it is the loss of continuous REM sleep or of the intermittent events that accompany it that is crucial in REM-sleep deprivation. Preliminary research indicates the latter, suggesting that REM-deprivation studies are more relevant to the function of separate intermittent events occurring in sleep than to the function of the continuous REM sleep.

Pathological aspects

      It is important at the outset to emphasize that, as dramatic and reliable as the various stages of sleep are, their functions or relations to waking performance, mood, and health are still largely unknown. Thus, association of a sleep abnormality with a certain stage of sleep (either in the sense that an abnormal event occurs during a certain stage or in the sense that an abnormal condition is associated with an increase or decrease in the proportion of total sleep time spent in that stage) is difficult to interpret when the function or necessity of that stage is uncertain. The pathology of sleep includes (1) primary disturbances of sleep-wakefulness mechanisms, such as seem to characterize encephalitis lethargica ( sleeping sickness), narcolepsy (irresistible brief episodes of sleep), and hypersomnia (sleep attacks of lesser urgency but greater duration than those of narcolepsy), (2) minor episodes occurring during sleep, such as bed-wetting and nightmares, (3) medical disorders such as sleep apnea whose symptoms occur during sleep, (4) sleep symptoms of the major psychiatric disorders, and (5) disorders of sleep schedule.

Primary disturbances

      Epidemic lethargic encephalitis is produced by viral infections of sleep-wakefulness mechanisms in the hypothalamus, a structure at the upper end of the brain stem. The disease often passes through several stages: fever and delirium, hyposomnia (loss of sleep), and hypersomnia (excessive sleep, sometimes bordering on coma). Inversions of 24-hour sleep-wakefulness patterns also are commonly observed, as are disturbances in eye movements.

       narcolepsy, like encephalitis, is thought to involve specific abnormal functioning of subcortical sleep-regulatory centres. Some people who experience attacks of narcolepsy also have one or more of the following auxiliary symptoms: cataplexy, a sudden loss of muscle tone often precipitated by an emotional response such as laughter or startle and sometimes so dramatic as to cause the person to fall down; hypnagogic (sleep onset) and hypnopompic (awakening) visual hallucinations of a dreamlike sort; and hypnagogic or hypnopompic sleep paralysis, in which the person is unable to move voluntary muscles (except respiratory muscles) for a period ranging from several seconds to several minutes. When narcolepsy includes one or more of these accessory symptoms, some of the sleep attacks consist of periods of REM at the onset of sleep. This precocious triggering of REM sleep (which occurs in adults generally only after 70–90 minutes of NREM sleep) may indicate that the accessory symptoms are dissociated aspects of REM sleep; i.e., the cataplexy and the paralysis represent the active motor inhibition of REM sleep, and the hallucinations represent the dream experience of REM sleep. Thus, narcolepsy involves REM sleep, and it is thought that it probably involves a failure of wakefulness mechanisms to inhibit the REM-sleep mechanisms.

      Hypersomnia may involve either excessive daytime sleep and drowsiness or a nocturnal sleep period of greater than normal duration, but it does not include sleep-onset REM periods. One reported concomitant of hypersomnia, the failure of the heart rate to decrease during sleep, suggests that hypersomniac sleep may not be as restful per unit of time as is normal sleep. In its primary form, hypersomnia is probably hereditary in origin (as is narcolepsy) and is thought to involve some disruption of the functioning of hypothalamic sleep centres. Narcolepsy and hypersomnia are not characterized by grossly abnormal EEG sleep patterns. The abnormality seems to involve a failure in “turn on” and “turn off ” mechanisms regulating sleep, rather than in the sleep process itself. Narcoleptic and hypersomniac symptoms can be managed by administration of drugs. Several forms of hypersomnia are periodic rather than chronic. One rare disorder of periodically excessive sleep, the Kleine-Levin syndrome, is characterized by periods of two to four weeks of excessive sleep, along with a ravenous appetite and psychotic-like behaviour during the few waking hours. The pickwickian syndrome (in reference to Joe, the fat boy, in Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers), another form of periodically excessive sleep, is associated with obesity and respiratory insufficiency.

      Hyposomnia (insomnia) (this word, meaning “too little sleep,” is chosen in preference to “ insomnia,” or “lack of sleep,” because some sleep invariably is present) is less clearly understood than the conditions already mentioned. It has been demonstrated that, by physiological criteria, self-described poor sleepers generally sleep much better than they imagine. Their sleep, however, does show signs of disturbance: frequent body movement, enhanced levels of autonomic functioning, reduced levels of REM sleep, and in some the intrusion of waking rhythms (alpha waves) throughout the various sleep stages. Although hyposomnia in a particular situation is common and without pathological import, chronic hyposomnia may be related to psychological disturbance. Hyposomnia conventionally is treated by administration of drugs but often with substances that are potentially addictive and otherwise dangerous when used over long periods. Newer treatments involve behavioral programs such as the temporary restriction of sleep time and its gradual reinstatement.

Minor episodes

      Among the minor episodes sometimes considered abnormal in sleep are somniloquy (sleep talking) and somnambulism ( sleepwalking), enuresis (bed-wetting), bruxism (teeth grinding), snoring, and nightmares. Sleep talking seems more often to consist of inarticulate mumblings than of extended, meaningful utterances. It occurs at least occasionally for many people and at this level cannot be considered pathological. Sleepwalking is not uncommon in children, but its continuation into adulthood is suggestive of persistent immaturity of the central nervous system. Enuresis may be a secondary symptom of a variety of organic conditions or, more frequently, a primary disorder in its own right. In the latter case, it seems to involve some immaturity in neural control of bladder muscles (muscle system, human). While mainly a disorder of early childhood, enuresis persists into adulthood for a small number of persons. Treatment generally has been directed either toward sensitizing the sleeper to bladder distention, so that he will awaken and urinate according to appropriate social norms, or toward increasing bladder capacity. Primary enuresis does not seem to be an abnormality of sleep, sleep cycles of bed-wetting children and of non-bed-wetting children being roughly the same. Teeth grinding is not consistently associated with any particular stage of sleep, nor does it appreciably affect overall sleep patterning; it too seems to be an abnormality in, rather than of, sleep.

      A variety of frightening experiences associated with sleep have, at one time or another, been called nightmares. Because not all such phenomena have proved to be identical in their associations with sleep stages or with other variables, several distinctions need to be made between them. incubus, the classic nightmare of adult years, consists of arousal from stage 4 NREM sleep with a sense of heaviness over the chest and with diffuse anxiety but with little or no dream recall. Night terrors (pavor nocturnus) are a disorder of early childhood. Delta-wave NREM sleep is suddenly interrupted; the child may scream and sit up in apparent terror and be incoherent and inconsolable. After a period of minutes, he returns to sleep, often without ever having been fully alert or awake. Dream recall generally is absent, and the entire episode may be forgotten in the morning. Anxiety dreams most often seem associated with spontaneous arousals from REM sleep. There is remembrance of a dream whose content is in keeping with the disturbed awakening. While their persistent recurrence probably indicates waking psychological disturbance or stress caused by a difficult situation, anxiety dreams occur occasionally in many otherwise healthy persons.

Disorders accentuated during sleep

      A variety of medical symptoms may be accentuated by the conditions of sleep. Attacks of angina (angina pectoris) (spasmodic, choking pain), for example, apparently can be augmented by the activation of the autonomic nervous system in REM sleep; the same is true of gastric acid secretions in persons who have duodenal ulcers. NREM sleep, on the other hand, can increase the likelihood of certain kinds of epileptic discharge.

      Rhythmic snoring, which can occur throughout sleep, indicates the partial muscular relaxation of sleep, and its occasional occurrence is not abnormal. When snoring is of the loud, laboured, snorting variety, however, and is accompanied by pauses in respiration of more than 10 seconds in duration, broken by gasping sounds, the respiratory disorder called sleep apnea may be present. This disorder can occur at any age but is most common in the elderly. It results in hypoxia and sleep fragmentation, both of which contribute to excessive daytime sleepiness and cognitive deficits. Treatment approaches include behaviour change (reduction of alcohol consumption and body weight), sleep-position training, mechanical appliances to keep the airway unobstructed, and surgery.

      The resemblance of dream consciousness to waking psychotic (psychosis) experience often has been noted, and the psychotic has been considered a “waking dreamer.” Thus, it has been theorized that waking psychotic symptoms may be generated by a spontaneous or REM-sleep-deprivation-induced shift of REM phenomena from sleep to the waking state. Symptomatically, schizophrenics (schizophrenia) have shown neither the exacerbation of psychotic symptoms under experimental REM-sleep deprivation nor the consistent or large deviations from normal EEG sleep patterning that would seem to be required by the hypothesis that sleep mechanisms play some critical role in bringing on psychotic episodes. Depressed (depression) people do sleep less and have an earlier first REM period than nondepressed people. The first REM period, occurring 40–60 minutes after sleep onset, is often longer than normal, with more eye-movement activity. This suggests a disruption in the drive-regulation function, affecting such things as sexuality, appetite, or aggressiveness, all of which are reduced in such persons. REM deprivation by pharmacological agents (tricyclic antidepressants) or by REM-awakening techniques appears to reverse this sleep abnormality and to relieve the waking symptoms.

Disorders of sleep schedule

      There are two prominent types of sleep-schedule disorders: phase-advanced sleep and phase-delayed sleep. In the former the sleep onset and offset occur earlier than the social norms, and in the latter sleep onset is delayed and waking is also later in the day than is desirable. These alterations in the sleep-wake cycle may occur in shift workers or following international travel across time zones. They can be treated by gradual readjustment of the timing of sleep.

Drugs (drug) and sleep

      Various chemical substances have long been employed to induce or prolong sleep, but there have been few double-blind studies (neither the physician who evaluates the results nor the patient knows whether the latter has received a drug or a placebo) of alleged hypnotics (sedative-hypnotic drug) (sleep-inducing drugs) in which sleep has been assessed by physiological measurement; the mechanisms of sleep themselves are only now beginning to be isolated. The little research that has been done makes it clear that the manner in which a drug affects sleep can be extremely complex, with different effects sometimes attributable to different dosages of the same substance and with different effects sometimes observed for short-term and long-term administration of the same substance.

      Many pharmacological agents tend to reduce the absolute amount and relative proportion of time spent in REM sleep. In this sense, REM sleep has been called a fragile state. Specifically, most effective hypnotics, particularly the barbiturates (barbiturate) (e.g., pentobarbital, secobarbital), decrease both total REM time and the proportion of sleep spent in REM sleep, with enhanced amounts of NREM sleep. amphetamine, an analeptic (stimulant), decreases REM sleep. Many tranquilizers (tranquilizer) also slightly reduce REM sleep. There is evidence that the withdrawal symptoms of persons taken off addictive drugs of any variety (e.g., barbiturates, amphetamines, narcotics) are accompanied by relatively high percentages of REM sleep. It has been suggested that the drugs in question are REM-sleep deprivers, that the elevated periods spent in REM sleep on withdrawal represent REM-sleep rebound, that the withdrawal syndrome may be functionally related to high pressure for REM sleep, and that the vivid, unpleasant dreams associated with REM-sleep rebound may be responsible for some patients' return to the use of the REM-sleep-depriving agents. caffeine seems to have little effect on normal sleep patterning, but the effects of alcohol (alcohol consumption) are variable: the short-term effect is to reduce the time spent in REM sleep, but, with continued use, there may be an REM-sleep rebound. Not all drug effects are on REM sleep; some of the more recently developed tranquilizers and hypnotics have been found to reduce stage 4 of NREM sleep.

      Much interest has been attached to the search for hypnotic substances that are not REM-sleep deprivers—that is, that induce or prolong sleep without altering natural sleep patterns. While some such hypnotics have been found, they most often either have adverse side effects or have not been fully evaluated. Theoretically, the most interesting substances are those few that have been found to increase REM sleep. In certain dosage ranges and under certain conditions, such an effect has been noted for reserpine, a tranquilizer, and for d-lysergic acid diethylamide ( LSD), a hallucinogen. Both substances have important interactions with neurohumours ( serotonin and norepinephrine—substances formed in nerve cells), and their effects may offer clues to the mechanisms underlying REM sleep.

Theories of sleep

      Two kinds of sleep theories of contemporary interest may be distinguished. One begins with the peripheral physiology of sleep and relates it to underlying neural (nervous system) or biochemical mechanisms. Such theories most often rely on experiments with animals by means of drugs or surgery. Alternatively, sleep theories may start with behavioral observations of sleep and may attempt to specify the functions of such a state of lethargy and insensitivity from an evolutionary or adaptive point of view. The question here is not so much how people sleep, or even why they sleep, but what good it does.

Mechanistic (mechanism) theories

      Historically, mechanistic theories of sleep have focused on a succession of organs or structures in a manner reflective of the degree of access different civilizations have had to the inner workings of the human body. Thus, the relatively perceptible processes of circulation, digestion, and secretion played large roles in the theories of classical antiquity, and modern theories have been concerned with the central nervous system, particularly the brain, although various peripheral factors in the induction of sleep have not been ruled out. Proposals that blood composition, metabolic changes, or internal secretions regulate sleep are necessarily incomplete to the extent that they ignore the contributions of environment and intent to the onset of sleep. It also has been noted that, in humans born with two heads, one “twin” may seem asleep while the other is awake, despite their sharing a circulatory system.

Neural theories

      Among neural theories of sleep, there are certain issues that each must face. Is the sleep-wakefulness alternation to be considered a property of individual neurons (nerve cells), making unnecessary the postulation of specific regulative centres, or is it to be assumed that there are some aggregations of neurons that play a dominant role in sleep induction and maintenance? The Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich) adopted the former position, proposing that sleep is the result of irradiating inhibition among cortical and subcortical neurons (nerve cells in the outer brain layer and in the brain layers beneath the cortex). Microelectrode studies, on the other hand, have revealed high rates of discharge during sleep from many neurons (neuron) in the motor and visual areas of the cortex, and it thus seems that, as compared with wakefulness, sleep must consist of a different organization of cortical activity rather than some general, overall decline.

      Another issue has been whether there is a waking centre, fluctuations in whose level of functioning are responsible for various degrees of wakefulness and sleep, or whether the induction of sleep requires another centre, actively antagonistic to the waking centre. Early speculation favoured the passive view of sleep. A cerveau isolé preparation, an animal in which a surgical incision high in the midbrain has separated the cerebral hemispheres from sensory input, demonstrated chronic somnolence. It has been reasoned that a similar cutting off of sensory input, functional rather than structural, must characterize natural states of sleep. Other supporting observations for the stimulus-deficiency theory of sleep included presleep rituals such as turning out the lights, regulation of stimulus input, and the facilitation of sleep induction by muscular relaxation. With the discovery of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS; a network of nerves in the brain stem), it was found that it is not the sensory nerves themselves that maintain cortical arousal but rather the ARAS, which projects impulses diffusely to the cortex from the brain stem. Presumably, sleep would result from interference with the active functioning of the ARAS. Injuries to the ARAS were in fact found to produce sleep. Sleep thus seemed passive, in the sense that it was the absence of something (ARAS support of sensory impulses) characteristic of wakefulness.

      Theory has tended to depart from this belief and to move toward conceiving of sleep as an actively produced state. Two kinds of observation primarily have been responsible for the shift. First, earlier studies showing that sleep can be induced directly by electrical stimulation of certain areas in the hypothalamus have been confirmed and extended to other areas in the brain. Second, the discovery of REM sleep has been even more significant in leading theorists to consider the possibility of actively produced sleep. REM sleep, by its very active nature, defies description as a passive state. As is noted below, REM sleep can be eliminated in experimental animals by the surgical destruction of a group of nerve cells in the pons, the active function of which appears to be necessary for REM sleep. Thus, it is difficult to imagine that the various manifestations of REM sleep reflect merely the deactivation of wakefulness mechanisms.

      The REM–NREM-sleep dichotomy poses a third issue for the theories of sleep mechanisms, or at least for those who accept the idea of sleep as an active phenomenon. Does one hypnogenic (sleep-causing) system serve both kinds of sleep, or are there two antagonistic sleep systems, one for REM sleep and one for NREM sleep? Opinion is sharply divided. One group of theorists states that there must be two sleep systems. It is noted that NREM sleep is not affected—but REM sleep is abolished—by injuries to the pontine tegmentum (the posterior part of the pons) and that NREM sleep is suppressed in animals whose brain stem has been severed at the midpoint of the pons, suggesting that an NREM-sleep centre behind this section no longer is capable of suppressing the effect of the ARAS. It is further observed that the neurohumour serotonin is localized in the brain-stem regions presumed to be responsible for NREM sleep; that destruction of serotonin-containing nerve cells in the brain stem may produce insomnia; (insomnia) that, in some species, reductions of serotonin by chemical interference with its production produces an amount of sleep loss correlated with the reduction of serotonin; that administration of a serotonin precursor (a substance from which serotonin is formed) after interference with production of serotonin produces a sleeplike state and that artificially induced increases in brain serotonin increase NREM sleep; that the neurohumour norepinephrine is localized in the brain-stem regions presumed to be responsible for REM sleep; and that substances interfering with the synthesis of norepinephrine suppress REM sleep. Other theorists have proposed that REM and NREM sleep are served by a common hypnogenic system. Chemical stimulation of certain brain structures, assumed to constitute a hypnogenic system, has been found capable of inducing both stages of sleep. It also is argued that different varieties of sleep should require different mechanisms no more than do different varieties of wakefulness (e.g., alertness, relaxation).

Functional theories

      Functional theories stress the recuperative and adaptive value of sleep. Sleep arises most unequivocally in animals that maintain a constant body temperature and that can be active at a wide range of environmental temperatures. In such forms, increased metabolic requirements may find partial compensation in periodic decreases in body temperature and metabolic rate (i.e., during NREM sleep). Thus, the parallel evolution of temperature regulation and NREM sleep has suggested to some authorities that NREM sleep may best be viewed as a regulatory mechanism conserving energy expenditure in species whose metabolic requirements are otherwise high. As a solution to the problem of susceptibility to predation that comes with the torpor of sleep, it has been suggested that the periodic reactivation of the organism during sleep better prepares it for fight or flight and that the possibility of enhanced processing of significant environmental (environment) stimuli during REM sleep may even reduce the need for sudden confrontation with danger. Other functional theorists agree that NREM sleep may be a state of “bodily repair,” while suggesting that REM sleep is one of “brain repair” or restitution, a period, for example, of increased cerebral protein synthesis or of “reprogramming” the brain so that information achieved in wakeful functioning is most efficiently assimilated. In their specification of functions and provision of evidence for such functions, such theories are necessarily vague and incomplete. The function of stage 2 NREM sleep is still unclear, for example. Such sleep is present in only rudimentary form in subprimate species yet consumes approximately half of human sleep time. Comparative, physiological, and experimental evidence is unavailable to suggest why so much human sleep is spent in this stage. In fact, poor sleepers whose laboratory sleep records show high proportions of stage 2 and little or no REM sleep often report feeling they have not slept at all.

David Foulkes Rosalind D. Cartwright

Additional Reading

The standard reference on the physiology of sleep is Nathaniel Kleitman, Sleep and Wakefulness, rev. and enlarged ed. (1963). Ernest Hartmann, The Functions of Sleep (1973), summarizes psychological and biological research on REM and NREM sleep functions; Jerrold S. Maxmen, A Good Night's Sleep: A Step-by-Step Program for Overcoming Insomnia and Other Sleep Problems (1981), covers a range of sleep problems; Anthony Kales and Joyce D. Kales, Evaluation and Treatment of Insomnia (1984), comprehensively discusses this sleep disorder; Timothy H. Monk, Sleep, Sleepiness, and Performance (1991), addresses the effects of sleep deprivation; Peretz Lavie, The Enchanted World of Sleep (1996), is a highly accessible treatment of sleep research; Jerome H. Siegel, The Neural Control of Sleep and Waking (2002), gives an overview of historical and contemporary sleep research; Pierre Maquet, Carlyle Smith, and Robert Stickgold (eds.), Sleep and Brain Plasticity (2003), explores the role of sleep in learning; and Daniel J. Buysse (ed.), Sleep Disorders and Psychiatry (2005), describes major sleep disorders and examines how psychiatric problems affect sleep.David Foulkes Rosalind D. Cartwright

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