Sleeping Disorders

Insomnia

 

• Persistent problems falling asleep

• Affects 10% of the population 

Narcolepsy

• Suffers from sleeplessness and may fall asleep at unpredictable or inappropriate times
• Directly into REM sleep
• Less than .001% of population

Sleep Apnea

• A person stops breathing during their sleep
• Wake up momentarily, gasps for air, then falls back to sleep
• Very common especially in heavy males.

Night Terrors

• A sleep disorder characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified
• Occurs in stage A, not REM, and are not often remembered

Sleepwalking

• sleepwalking is a sleep disorder affecting an estimated 10% of all humans at least once in their lives
• sleepwalking most often occurs during deep non-REM sleep (stages 3 or 4 sleep) early in the night

Dreams

• A sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person's mind.
• Manifest Content : the remembered story-line of a dream
• Latent Content : the underlying meaning of a dream

Why do we dream?

• Freud's wish-fulfillment Theory
• Dreams are the key to understanding our inner conflicts
• Ideas and thoughts that are hidden in our unconscious
• Manifest and latent content

Information-Processing Theory

• Dreams act to sort out and understand the memories that you experience that day
• REM sleep does increase after stressful events

Activation-Synthesis Theory

• during the night our brainstem releases random neural activity, dreams may be a way to make sense of that activity.