Dreamland

I have recently finished reading the book Dreamland. My initial intrigue was that I tend to have "insomniac" tendencies and wanted to learn more about the world of sleeping. Although, I found it ironic that I would read this book right before I went to bed, it was too interesting to initiate any sheep counting to put me to sleep. The book isn't as heavily researched as for say a Mary Roach novel, but it does contain many stories/adventures with just enough science mixed in to make it the perfect blend of non-fiction.

Here are some interesting facts I learned from the novel:

-Most people spend a third of their lives asleep.

-Dolphins sleep with half of their brains awake at a time, giving them the ability to surface for air and be on the look-out for predators while the other half is presumably dreaming.

-Birds have the ability to put half of their brain to sleep or the whole thing.

-Lions and gerbils sleep 13 hours a day.

-Tigers and squirrels sleep approximately 15 hours.

-Elephants sleep 3.5 hours.

-Giraffes get about 1.5 hours sleep.

-Many studies have shown that splitting sleep into two roughly equal halves is something that our bodies will do if we give it the chance; but because of artificial light it is more difficult for our bodies to achieve this sleeping goal.

-because of the invention of the lightbulb, human sleeping has been changed forever, and caused a new world of health problems that comes from an overabundance of light.

-Thomas Edison founded a company called Edison Electric Co, which is now known as General Electric.

-Doctors currently think it is possible to train the brain to dream about subjects and characters (components that could haunt veterans when returned home), in a sense rewriting the stories that they tell themselves each night. This is called imagery rehearsal therapy; in studies involving combat veterans, imagery rehearsal therapy was as effective at reducing nightmares as medication.

-Companies such as Google, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Cisco Systems have installed designated napping areas in their offices.

-Coffee is popular as a stimulant because it readily crosses the barrier between the blood and the brain, and once in the brain caffeine block the absorption of adenosine (a nucleotide that slows down nerve connections and makes you feel drowsy).

-In 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, pieces of gum that packed 100 milligrams of caffeine (more than a shot of espresso) were given to soldiers.

            -Packets are currently available to civilians at Amazon.com, each one stamped with the slogan    “Stay Awake, Stay Alive.”

-A wrist activograph (a wristwatch-sized sleep monitor) records the body’s movements each minute to determine whether the person wearing it is asleep or awake.

            -By 2020, the monitor is expected to become a standard part of a soldier’s gear.

-Sleepwalking is called somnambulism.

-When someone is sleepwalking, the parts of the brain that control movement and spatial awareness are awake, while the parts of the brain responsible for consciousness are still asleep.

-There was a case involving a man who drove 14 miles while sleepwalking and killed his mother and father-in laws and was found by a jury to be not guilty of the murders. His attorney indicated “sleepwalking wasn’t a defect of the mind. It was simply a normal condition in which the body acted without any conscious input from the brain. “ Therefore her client could not be held responsible for something he never chose to do and he couldn’t be deemed insane for a common and temporary state."

-Her client’s deeds coined a new term: non-insane automatism.

-A 1992 National Commission on Sleep Disorders report estimates that sleep apnea was the cause of 38,000 fatal heart attacks and strokes in the U.S. each year.

-Apnea comes from the Greek word for breathless.

-English bulldogs, pugs, and other breeds with pushed-in faces are the only animals besides humans that experience sleep apnea.