Sleeping is a complex and rather fragile activity. It consumes around a third of our lives, but why? Scientists and philosophers have struggled to find out. Sleeping is of course essential to a healthy mental and physical life, we know that much, the symptoms of sleep loss have been well documented.

Another facet of sleeping we’ve got some reasonable grasp of is that it goes through several cycles. In the REM stage we dream, in other cycles the brain shifts through varying frequencies of neural activity. These are important, because if we’re awoken in the wrong stage, our energy and mental abilities can suffer throughout the day. We should awake naturally at the right stage of our sleep cycle, and how we do that is now being discovered:

“These findings identify a new network and refine our understanding of the brain network that regulates sleep and wake cycle,” Dr. Antoine Adamantidis, a neuroscientist at the university and the study’s lead author, told The Huffington Post in an email.

When the researchers activated the neurons in the circuit, they were able to induce rapid awakening from sleep. And when they stimulated these neurons for an extended period, the mice stayed awake. However, when the researchers inhibited the neurons in the circuit, the mice slept longer, more intensely, and with fewer interruptions.

It appears we’re getting closer to a fuller understanding of sleep. Although we still need to answer the ‘why’ question, this helps us in answering the ‘how.’ Check out the full post for more details of the study.

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