Rogulja (03:26): The biggest problem to me is that there’s too much focus on the relationship between the brain and sleep because we tend to think of it from our human-centric perspective, like you said, because we dream, et cetera. So we see that in basically the simplest animals. They disconnect, they stop paying attention to what’s going on around them, they can’t respond to external stimulation, unless that stimulation is very strong. It is very clear that they engage in these forms of behavior that I would say, for all practical purposes are really like our sleep. And as we look at the simple animals, like jellyfish, and Hydra now, so animals that have very, very primitive nervous systems. So there are these animals that we refer to as the living fossils, because supposedly, they haven’t changed much throughout animal evolution. Rogulja (03:24): What we think today is really that sleep is as old as animals themselves. But as you say, maybe to get at the how questions we should be looking, possibly, at other animals? Who sleeps in the animal world? I mean, we have this very, naturally, human-centric view of what sleep is about, we think about our dreams. Strogatz (03:09): I notice you mention other animals besides people. What are the most primitive things about sleep that we can understand? But the way that we want to get to the why is by asking how. And I think it’s a tricky thing, asking why. They stop moving, but you can stop moving anyway, right? So, you stop moving, but this is coupled with that loss of awareness, relaxation of the body. Yet we know that they really do enter these states where they disconnect.
Usually, when we study sleep in humans or other mammals, we do these recordings where we look at electrical activity of the brain, right, and you can see these waves change, and you can’t do that in simple animals that sleep. But you’re definitely not sleeping, right? So, yeah, what is it that’s so different? And I would say that, for me, what is the kind of most defining characteristic of sleep is that kind of loss of awareness of the external environment and of your internal state, in many ways. Rogulja (02:07): Well, you’re probably sitting right now and kind of resting in some way. Because in sleep, we have this whole altered state of consciousness. But sleep seems like something really different than just mere rest.
And she said, well, because you’re tired, it’s going to help you get rest. Like, we all understand that, you know, like, I remember asking my mother, “Why do I have to go to sleep?” when I was a little kid. But first, I was hoping we could talk broadly about sleep in general. Strogatz (01:38): Yeah, I’m super excited to talk to you about your work. But first, Dragana Rogulja, thank you so much for joining us today.ĭragana Rogulja (01:35): Thank you so much for inviting me. He does that by looking in an unexpected place - in fish that live in caves in Mexico. Later, we’ll be hearing from Alex Keene of Texas A&M University, who studies the neural regulation of sleep, and the role it plays in the bigger picture of how sleep has evolved. She also looks at the lethal effects of sleep deficiencies. She studies why we need to sleep, and how the brain switches between being asleep and being awake. She’s an associate professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. But why, exactly?ĭragana Rogulja knows something about that. In fact, if you go without sleep long enough, you will die. And sleep deprivation doesn’t need to be long term to do damage. When we miss out on sleep, it impairs our circulation, our digestion, immune system, metabolism, and of course, brain function. One thing that sleep researchers are pretty sure of is that every system in our body seems to be impacted by sleep. But there’s still so much about it that we don’t understand. Why do we sleep anyway? We spend about a third of our lives asleep, so it seems like it must be pretty important. Today, we’re going to be talking all about sleep. Steven Strogatz (00:03): I’m Steve Strogatz, and this is The Joy of Why, a podcast from Quanta Magazine that takes you into some of the biggest unanswered questions in science and mathematics today.
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