A whole slew of articles about sleep in the NYT yesterday about various scientific theories of sleep. In my opinion, the most interesting is this one, about the similarities between sleeping patterns in birds and humans. Did you know that pigeons also sleep throughout the night and frequently take naps during the day? Or that birds can sleep with one side of their brain while the other side remains awake, watching for predators? Well now you know.
There was also a longer article about the state of various scientific studies about sleep (in brief: we don't know why we do it, but we think it has something to do with consolidating memories), and one about the theory of why we have nightmares (as a way of dealing with intense memories, or something). And as if that wasn't enough for you, here's an article with various quotes about sleep, including one of my favorite quotes by a particle physicist, "A friend of mine once dreamed he was an elementary particle. Nothing came of it."
As someone who frequently dreams of being a superhero, I'm glad to see Science shedding some light on this important subject.
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