ABSTRACT
Why do we sleep?We sleep to stay awake is perhaps a succinct, albeit overly simplistic, response. Defined as a transient state of altered consciousness and perceptual disengagement from our environment, sleep unlike coma is an active process involving a host of complex interactions between many cortical, brainstem, diencephalic, and forebrain structures. During this ‘rest’ state, the cerebral metabolism and oxygen consumption within the brain remain significant. Any disorder that interferes with this intriguing cerebral event during sleep will therefore disrupt the proper execution of this necessary and vital state of our existence. Although the function of sleep is largely unknown, one observation is evident-that good sleep is critical to the level of our state of wakefulness. The biggest clue to how important a properly executed sleep is to our daytime function is derived mainly from our studies on the clinical effects of sleep disorders as well as experimental studies on sleep deprivation. In recent years research in the neurophysiological and neurochemical aspects of sleep has also yielded new and exciting data on the biochemical events in the brain during sleep and awake states. This microlevel information has opened up a vast frontier that can potentially allow us to employ biochemical tools to manipulate these two states of vigilance. Although much has been learned from the multitude of studies over the past several decades, the answer to why we sleep remains elusive.
