Brain Disorders: The Five Stages Of Sleep

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There are a total of 5 stages of sleep; stage one is the introduction to sleep (N1), stage two is the beginning of sleep (N2), stage three is the slow wave sleep (N3), stage four is deep sleep (N4), and stage five is rapid eye movement (REM); the first four stages are known as non-REM. These sleep stages were discovered during a sleep study in 1929. German psychiatrist Hans Berger had an electroencephalogram performed on him; Berger had electrodes attached to his scalp keep track of the electrical impulses in his brain, also called brain waves. This discovery was a major breakthrough for sleep stages; it helped scientists gain a better understand the brain during sleep. Because of this experimental sleep study, we have extensive knowledge regarding …show more content…
Within stage two, brain waves become even slower and produce “sleep spindles”, which are occasional bursts of rapid waves. Sleep spindles are detected because during an electroencephalography, or EEG, their shape rapidly increases in amplitude and then rapidly decays. There are two different types of sleep spindles: slow spindles, which are about 12 hertz, and fast spindles, which are about 14 hertz. The areas of your brain that are affected by sleep spindles are the “insular cortices, superior temporal gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex, and thalamus” (How Does). Research has lead scientists to believe that the activity caused by sleep spindles is the brain learning and teaching itself about its own muscles. Also during stage two, eye movements stop, the heart begins to slow, and the body temperature decreases. N2 consists of about forty-five percent of an adult’s total time spent sleeping (What is Sleep). Most of an adults night is spent sleeping within stage …show more content…
N4 consists of approximately thirteen percent of the typical adult’s total sleep time. This stage has the most cerebral shutdown out of all of the stages. It is very hard to wake someone up during the fourth stage of sleep; if one does wake up during N4, they often feel groggy, disoriented, or still tired for several minutes after waking up. Night terrors, bedwetting, and sleepwalking can all happen during stage four of sleep (What Happens). This is the deepest level of sleep, but it does not last very long. As N4 comes to an end, so does you non-REM stage
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