Functions of Sleep: Restoration Theory

Created by: Megan Billyeald
Created on: 07-01-13 17:24

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Functions of sleep: Restoration Theory
- Slow-wave sleep
  - Enables body repair
  - Growth hormone is secreted during SWS. This stimulates growth so is important during childhood.
  - Enables protein synthesis
  - GH is secreted in pulses through the day but more is secreted at night and mainly during SWS.
  - Sassin found that when the sleep-wake cycle was reversed the release of GH was also reversed - shows that release of GH is controlled by neural mechanisms related to SWS.
- REM Sleep
  - Brain growth
    - REM sleep higher in premature babies.
      - This has been explained in terms of their rapid brain growth. Premature babies will need more REM sleep as they need to develop quicker than babies that were born late or on their due date.
        This suggests a relationship between neural development and REM sleep.
  - REM sleep and memory
    - Crick and Mitchison proposed that during REM sleep, unwanted memories are discarded therefore making more important memories accessible.
    - However, more recent research has found a more complex relationship which suggests that REM sleep is important for remembering skills whereas SWS sleep is important for remembering meanings of things and events.
- Studies on the effects of total sleep deprivation have suggested that lack of sleep doesn't always result in long-term damage.
  - However, when participants have been deprived of sleep for more then 72 hours they had short period of microsleep while still awake.
    - This shows that when participants have suffered from total sleep deprivation no long-term damage has been found as no damage was reported from the participants.
- Partial sleep deprivation may lead to REM rebound.
  - This is the need for more REM sleep after a night deprived of it. To achieve REM sleep deprivation researchers would wake sleep volunteers as soon as their eyes start to dart around. The results shows that participants would usually go straight back into REM sleep when they go back to sleep.
    - This shows that REM sleep is important so if we need to catch up on REM sleep there is a mechanism in place that will allow us to do so.
- AO3
  - The study of sleep deprivation is usually limited to case studies.
    - The main difficulty with case studies is that participants are likely to be unique.
      - This makes the results from the findings difficult to generalise to the wider population