Body, Brain and Sleep

PSY/211

Michelle Barron

Body, Brain and Sleep

During the early 1920s sleep was once considered an inactive, or passive, state in which both the body and the brain "turned off" to rest and recuperate from the day's waking activities. (Harvard Medical School, 2007) In 1929 scientist found a new way to record brain activity, which changed their way of thinking. Through electroencephalograms (EEGs) recordings researchers found that the brain was actually extremely operational at times, and not turned off at all. During time and different machines scientist discovered that the body goes through two main types of sleep, rapid-eye-movement (REM) and non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep.

REM sleep is also known as paradoxical sleep, a stage during which you have rapid...