Why do we sleep? What is the brain doing during sleep? What happens to our consciousness when we sleep? Mankind has been asking these questions for thousands of years and is still looking for answers. But today somnology is developing at an incredible pace. But dreams remain a mystery to us, and the more we study it, the more confusing and interesting this mystery becomes. Sleep is the most ancient and, apparently, a vital state that originated at the dawn of evolution. An analogue of slow human sleep - a "dreamlike" state of rest - appears already at the level of annelids and insects. Recently there was an article by British authors describing a study on fruit flies. Among almost a thousand female fruit flies, sleeping on average 5 hours a day, scientists have found not only a handful of flies in a “sleeplike” state, but even three individuals sleeping 15, 14 and even 4 minutes a day! By all accounts, they should have died very soon. But they live day after day, week after week without problem. And the life of the fruit fly is about 40 days. Therefore, this sensation is being discussed by the entire scientific world.
This study again posed a question that seemed to have been answered long ago - can a person live without sleep? For now, the answer seems to be no. A mammal, especially a human, is not a fly. Physiologically, we need sleep, moreover, we vitally need both of its phases - slow and fast sleep, without them a person cannot think, his consciousness unable to function.
Our laboratory has recently obtained data on naked mole rats. These are amazing, strange animals that, according to all suppositions, should live for 3-4 years. But they live for 40 years! Many scientists believe they "know" the secret to longevity. We managed to implant electrodes into their brains and it turned out that they have an unusually large amount of REM sleep, sleep with dreams (a person normally has no more than 2 hours per night). There appears to be a correlation between lifespan and high REM sleep rates.
Thus, more and more new questions arise all the time, all impossible to find answers to. We seem to be moving around the problem in a spiral, we get to know it deeper and deeper, but we will never be able to fully cognize it.
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