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RUNNING HEAD: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 0

Annotated Bibliography

Stages of Sleep

Dusty Smith

Rasmussen College

Arber, S., Hislop, J., & Williams, S. (2007). Editors' Introduction: Gender, sleep, and the Life Course. Sociological Research Online, 12(5), 19.

It is the first stage called introduction to sleep and mostly observed by someone who is nodding their head while listening to a boring lecture. During this stage you can experience the slowdown of the brain activities and relaxation of muscles. At this juncture, someone can easily wake up, that is why some people may jump if awaken for no reason. The jumping experience is called myoclonic jerk and causes an individual to be awake suddenly. People spend a third of their lives sleeping, but it differs from young children to older adults. During the first phase of sleep, most individuals enjoy silence in a room so as to concentrate and not be interfered with by external factors such as a car alarm or a phone ringing.

Maquet, P. (2005). Sleep and brain plasticity. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

It is the second phase of sleep where muscles continue to relax further, and the brain activities drop exponentially. This stage is best described as “beginning of sleep,” and a person starts to sleep officially. During this stage you may still be aware of some of your surroundings. For example if you have been in bed for roughly 30 minutes and the phone rings, it is still easy to answer the phone since you may still hear it ring even if you’re sleeping. Therefore in this stage, the individual is asleep but aware of what is happening around them. Research that has been conducted has shown that dolphins and whales also sleep, however, only half of their brain is actually sleeping whereas the other half is still active. Tough they may be asleep, they can still surfaces in water to breathe. To some people snoring begins in this stage due to excess relation of throat muscles causing the collapse of the upper airway.

Horovitz, S. G., Braun, A. R., Carr, W. S., Picchioni, D., Balkin, T. J., Fukunaga, M., & Duyn, J. H. (2009). Decoupling of the brain's default mode network during deep sleep. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(27), 11376-11381.

Deep sleep categorizes this stage, and the body takes a good rest. Mostly referred to as slow wave sleep and brain and muscle activities decreases. This can easily be explained. For example, if someone has been in bed for roughly 50 minutes and then the phone rings, he or she may not even hear it ring and if they do, it is hard for most people to engage in any conversation. While in this stage, muscles relax and some experience difficulty in breathing. Another thing that takes place under this stage is rapid movement of eyes caused by mostly dreams. Movement of eyes can still be due to the brain being awake, and yet muscles and body are paralyzed.