Name: Why Do We Sleep? - Instant Egghead #55
Uploaded: 2014-06-13T00:42:58.000Z
Duration: 2 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Would it upset you to find out you had a chronic brain condition

that causes you to lose consciousness for many hours at a time

Adverbs of manner

and periodically experience paralysis and hallucinations?

What I've described are the symptoms of sleep.

If you live to be 80, you will spend around 26 years of your life in this state.

but why we are awake when we don't need to be,

using precious energy and possibly getting into trouble.

The big brown bat is only awake for around 4 hours just after the dusk.

which maximizes its chances of eating and

But large herbivores have to spend a lot of time foraging

So they can't afford to sleep for more than a few hours a day.

If there is some universal function of sleep,

a goat somehow accomplishes it in 5 hours,

a tiger in 15 and a dolphin with one eye open.

slumber is more than just than laying low.

The whole host of body functions are enhanced during sleep.

sleeping brain reinforces and archives new memories.

But how exactly this happens remains unknown.

why some animals sleep much longer than others.

Ultimately, some combination of these ideas

For Scientific American's Instant Egghead, I'm Joss Fong.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Why Do We Sleep? - Instant Egghead #55

brain

evidence

deprivation

function