Sleep Science

"Roughly one third of our lifetime is - or should be - spent asleep; yet despite the expansive scientific knowledge gained in many fields (i.e., psychology, neurophysiology) about our wake state, only relatively recently have we begun to catch up with the study of sleep. As Tom Roth, former editor of the journal Sleep, put it, "It's analogous to going to Mars with a third of the Earth's surface still unexplored" [1].Sleep is a strange experience, playing tricks on our consciousness. Sometimes within only a couple minutes of dozing off, we can go through a plethora of vivid and complex experiences. Alternatively, we may lapse into what feels like a total absence of consciousness, a jump in time, waking after a long slumber with no memory of the last eight hours. Sleep does not bend time, but without a doubt, it alters our consciousness. It is, therefore, no surprise that most people enjoy sleeping - when we sleep, we no longer feel the toothache, headache or the heartache that we suffer when awake"--