Our senses are not as sensitive during sleep compared to wake.There is an arousal threshold during sleep that only when it isovercome will it wake a person up. My question ishow is this arousal threshold lowered as sleepprogresses? And how it is raised again during thelatter stages of sleep?

answer

watching

103

views

For unlimited access to Homework Help, a Homework+ subscription is required.

You have 0 free answers left.
Get unlimited access to 3.8 million step-by-step answers.

Get unlimited access

Already have an account? Log in

Casey DurganLv2

3 Jan 2019

Unlock all answers

Get 1 free homework help answer.

Already have an account? Log in

Related questions

I heard you on ABC Breakfast talking of the full moon effect. Ihave suffered in no small way from it all my life and medicatemyself to sleep in a full moon, otherwise I don't sleep. As anengineer and science interested person I have thought a lot aboutthis phenomenon and have come up with a theory, which I'm verysurprised has not been considered previously. You said in yourarticle that gravity was excluded as a factor, but this is not thecase. Gravity is affected by the mass of the moon and it'sproximity to your location. The tides have complex interactionswith the earth and the sun, so making conclusions from the tidesalone is not always valid in relation to gravitational forces.Lakes are not tidally affected because there is no where for thewater to go. The ocean tidal waters don't go up and down like abath tub level, they go in and out like the waves on a beach. Iconclude that the increase of the gravitational force makessensitive people restless, and hence in a sleep lab, they are stillexposed to gravitational changes. I suggest the way to verify thisis to measure the gravitational force at different cycles of theearth and moon. I am also affected by air pressure in a similarway.When the air pressure is high, and it'sa full or near fullmoon, I'm unable to sleep without medication, and if I do partiallysleep, I have wild dreams. When the opposite is the case, I sleeplike the dead. Temperature is the other obvious variable thatexacerbates this cocktail of influences as well. Also, from anatural selection view, maybe we are restless at times of full moonas we are more visible to night predators, and need to keep morealert for that. As I said, I'm amazed that science hasn't resolvedthis question a long time ago. So much of nature is cycled by themoon.

redwallaby183

Adenosine is an important hormone in sleep regulation. It ispostulated that when a person is awake, there is a build up ofadenosine in the brain, which inhibits the neurons in the brain,and produces tiredness. (See answer for more information: Whatcauses humans to be sleepy?)

However, I am wondering what specifically causes this adenosinebuild up. I understand ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) is broken downto ADP in the brain to produce energy. I thought this ADP wouldthen be used to re-generate ATP again etc, so I'm not sure howadenosine is built up in the brain over a day.

Basically I am unsure how Adenosine itself, as opposed to ATP orADP, is produced during the waking state?

My theory is that during the high demand waking state there isinsufficient energy to convert ADP back to ATP, and the excess ADPis broken down to adenosine somehow.

I would appreciate an explanation of how this build up occurs,and also an explanation of how this in turn how it inducessleepiness would be a plus.

And how do we know whether they do or not?

If sleep is a physiological need, it seems weird that we becomeunable to fulfill on demand even in the absence of any obviousphysical issues. We would all probably would like to be able tofall asleep on demand on a long flight and we all know this can behard even when we are tired.

Thus, my question is whether this is a mostly human dysfunctionor a common animal property.