According to new analysis from UCLA, the size of REM sleep is linked to animals’ physique temperature, with greater physique temperatures related to decrease quantities of REM sleep.
Warm-blooded animal teams with decrease physique temperatures have extra speedy eye motion (REM) sleep, whereas these with greater physique temperatures have decrease quantities of REM sleep. This is in accordance with new analysis from Jerome Siegel, a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) professor who mentioned his research means that REM sleep acts like a “thermostatically controlled brain heater.”
REM sleep first happens about 90 minutes after falling asleep. Behind closed eyelids, your eyes dart quickly back and forth. Mixed frequency mind wave exercise turns into nearer to that seen in wakefulness. Your respiration turns into quicker and irregular, and your coronary heart charge and blood strain improve to close waking ranges. Most of your dreaming happens throughout REM sleep, though some can even happen in non-REM sleep. Your arm and leg muscle groups develop into quickly paralyzed, which prevents you from performing out your desires. As you age, much less of your time sleeping is spent in REM sleep.
Siegel says the findings counsel a beforehand unobserved relationship between physique temperature and REM sleep, a interval of sleep when the mind is extremely lively. Published lately in Lancet Neurology, the research was authored by Prof. Siegel, who directs the Center for Sleep Research on the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.
Birds have the very best physique temperature of any warm-blooded, or homeotherm, animal group at 41°C (106°F) whereas getting the least REM sleep at 0.7 hours per day. That’s adopted by people and different placental mammals (37°C/99°F), 2 hours of REM sleep), marsupials (35°C/95°F, 4.Four hours of REM sleep), and monotremes (31°C/88°F, 7.5 hours of REM sleep).
Brain temperature falls in non-REM sleep after which rises in REM sleep that sometimes follows. This sample “allows homeotherm mammals to save energy in non-REM sleep without the brain getting so cold that it is unresponsive to threat,” Siegel mentioned.
The quantity of people’ REM sleep is neither excessive nor low in comparison with different homeotherm animals, “undermining some popular views suggesting a role for REM sleep in learning or emotional regulation,” he mentioned.
Reference: “Sleep function: an evolutionary perspective” by Jerome M Siegel, PhD, 1 October 2022, The Lancet Neurology.
DOI: 10.1016/S1474-4422(22)00210-1
Siegel’s analysis is supported by National Institutes of Health grants (HLB148574 and DA034748) and the Medical Research Service of the Department of Veterans Affairs. He declared no competing pursuits.
