A Tireless Night for Your Brain You may have felt that, during the average online learning day, your brain was dormant and didn’t seem to want to be working. It's relatable. However, at the end of the day, believe it or not, your brain always works a night shift, namely, the sleep cycle, occurring 4 times in 1 night, every 90 minutes. Learning about it will probably reveal the answers to some of the strange things that happen before and during you sleep, all part of the process. Let’s investigate what your brain does during one sleep cycle: 1. (5 mins) The first phase of sleep may seem unusual but your body is actually twitching as part of the hypnic jerk, even though your body is starting to relax. How do you know if you’re twitching? You finally feel like you are about to fall asleep, but you feel like you are sinking, falling into your bed, into a bottomless pit and suddenly you jolt awake perplexed? This is the effect of the hypnic jerk. 2. (25 mins) Next, your body temperature drops and you lose a sense of your location. Here’s a sleep tip: the colder your room, the better. It's going to take longer for your body’s temperature to drop if your environment is too hot, taking longer to fall asleep. I'm not asking you to sleep in a freezer, though! You may feel like time and space is gone and you feel confused or disoriented. Congratulations, you are on your way to dreaming! 3. (40 mins) Deep sleep time! The third phase is the most important, when your energy is restored from the school day you recently had. Hormones are released and your breathing and heart-rate finally becomes even. Your body is doing a self-check now for any growth or damage to be addressed. This is the restorative state; you don’t even know that it is
happening! Of course, this is the main subject of the good-sleep lectures you’ve heard so many times before. 4. (1 hour) Also known as Rapid Eye Movement, REM sleep is when dreams occur. From the name, yes, your eyes do move very quickly under your eyelids. Your brain is alive and working. REM is what causes all your vivid dreams, even nightmares! You are not aware of anything at this point. Have you ever slept face down, trying to move and breathe but you feel like you can’t move? This is when you become partially paralysed. Yep, paralysed but you don’t lose all muscle power. *Phew* Your brain should be shutting down completely after this; it’s been through such an exhausting process.
However, it doesn’t stop there! Now, your brain is hyperactive. It is making decisions, processing information and is certainly wide awake, organising your memory file drawer too. Your heart and breathing also starts to speed up as well. You know when you’ve had a hectic day and after a night's sleep you think, ‘Wow! I don’t feel so bleuh any more. Probably just because I slept for a solid 8 hours!’ Actually, plot twist, it’s because of your brain’s backstage analysing of your emotional conflicts during the night. Your brain is now giving you therapy lessons and dealing with your emotional state. It isn’t magic though, it can’t tell you what to do next, but restarts you instead for the next day. Talk about behind-the-scenes work! Multiply this cycle by 4, every 90 minutes, and your brain has successfully completed it’s night shift, planning to be sleeping the next day!
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