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Stages of Sleep

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Submitted By jmjojo13
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From Zero to Five Making Six Stages of Slumbering Activities in Your Brain

By: Bill Pak
Section: #1762
(I was allowed permission by you to turn in this term paper due to some personal issues with the original term topic)

Ever wondered what in blue blazes your brain is doing when you sleep? Well so far, all the research and experiments that have been made to understand and answer this question have resulted with the so called six stages of sleep. The six stages of sleep starts from Stage 0 to Stage 5. Stage 0 is not really considered a stage since it involves the person of interest being awake. Sequentially, Stage 1 is considered to be the beginning of being asleep. Following Stage 1 is Stage 2 which is well known for its sleep spindles and K-complexes (L & F 8). Afterwards, Stage 3 is considered to be a transition phase towards Stage 4 and both stages are collectively often titled as deep sleep (McPhee 20). Lastly, but not the least, Stage 5 is identified as dream sleep and with REM (McPhee). Each stage is not just discerned by its major aspects, but by the activity in the brain in each stage. Although sleep can be described through the various behavioral changes, the different activities in the brain allow the discerning of each stage during sleep. Each stage is distinguished by various electrical activities and patterns across the brain (L & F 7). These electrical activities and patterns consistently change between each stage (McPhee 17). Obviously, each stage has its own unique electrical pattern, and these patterns can be recorded by a machine called the electroencephalograph. This device can detect any electrical change made by the activity of nerve cells in the brain and record it on an electroencephalogram, also known as EEG (McPhee 18). Along with the classifications of sleep stages through the different EEG patterns, two diverse types of sleep

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