![]() While asleep, their tiny brains lit up with bursts of neuron activity in the regions associated with singing. Researchers found that brain patterns during sleep changed significantly after the juvenile finches heard this first song. In several lab studies, juvenile Zebra Finches - they’re 40 days old and they have never heard the song of an adult up to this point - were played a recorded “tutor” song and this was the first song they ever heard. They’re used as model organisms in bird research. These are perky little songbirds native to Australia. This is how songbirds learn to sing: they need to listen to a tutor first, whether a parent or another adult bird.īiologists have studied the relationship between sleep and memory in Zebra Finches. This is true for songbirds, which account for about half of the world’s 10,000+ bird species. For example, memory is crucial when a juvenile bird learns how to sing. Memory has many important functions in a bird’s life. Second, sleep allows for memory processing and consolidation. But we do know that sleep serves a couple critically important functions for birds.įirst, sleep allows for healing, restoration, and the removal of wastes from the brain and body. We’ll come back to the evolution stuff in a moment. Or, of course, the behavior could be both primitive and important. In that case, it might have evolved independently in each lineage. Or maybe the trait serves a really important function. It could be a primitive behavior that was present in the common ancestor of all these critters. When a trait or behavior like sleep is widespread across the animal kingdom, we can infer why that might be. And there’s evidence that some fish and reptile species display similar patterns. Other mammals as well as birds have both REM and slow-wave-sleep phases. In humans, REM and slow-wave-sleep typically alternate over the course of a night. Slow-wave sleep is what we call “deep” sleep. Then we have slow-wave sleep, SWS, during which-you guessed it-the brainwaves pulse more slowly. Most of our dreams happen during REM sleep. You’ve heard of REM, which stands for “rapid eye movement.” During REM sleep, our eyes wiggle back-and-forth and our brainwaves oscillate rapidly. ![]() Brainwaves are commonly measured with an electroencephalogram, an EEG. Certain brainwave patterns dominate while an animal is awake and others occur during sleep. These waves are groovy rhythmic patterns made by millions of neurons communicating with each other. Brainwaves provide an important measure of these differences. Chemical and electrical processes in the brain differ between waking and sleep. Sleep is driven by things that happen in the brain. Sleep-like states have been documented in everything from jellyfish and nematode worms to bees, fish, and land vertebrates like you and me. ![]() Some form of sleep is present in pretty much every type of animal. Technical definitions of sleep-and there are several-include some combination of unconsciousness, limited body movement, distinct brainwave patterns and eye movements, reduced response to external stimuli, body posture, and a few other things. ![]() Scientists define it by either physiology or behavior. Sleep is a recurring physiological state of the body and brain. Well, actually, if you’re like me, sleep is that thing that happens to you only occasionally, never lasting quite long enough on any given night. What exactly is sleep? If you’re like me, you just take sleep for granted as the thing that happens for 8 hours every night after you get in bed and lose consciousness. ![]()
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