Introduction
There are two dimensions in consciousness:
-wakefulness: it is just a measure of how awake we are. For instance, when you are sleeping, your wakefulness is really low whereas when you're attending an English class your wakefulness is of course at its maximum.
-awareness: it is the ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns.
You can be aware without being awake and vice-versa. To help understanding the difference, you can complete the following exercise:
You can find the answer in the mooc I've followed on udacity and whose link is at the end of this article.
I - Sleep
a- Sleep functions
The first thing that is important to know about sleep is: why do we sleep?
Sleep has important functions:
-during sleep, our body works to restore itself after a long day of neural activity
-sleep aids in memory consolidation and learning activity
-sleep is important for neural growth
b- Sleep stages
During sleep, our body goes through what we call "sleep stages".
non-REM sleep: it consists of four stages, stage four is the deepest.
Now that we've seen the importance of sleep, it seems natural to examine the importance of sleep deprivation.
c- Sleep disorders
Sleep apnea: it is characterized by pauses in breathing or instances of shallow or infrequent breathing during sleep. Each pause in breathing, called an apnea, can last from at least ten seconds to several minutes, and may occur five to thirty times an hour. It is quite problematic because it causes the person to go from deep sleep to light sleep. This results in a poor quality of sleep and makes the person tired the next day. This is one of the leading causes of excessive daytime sleepiness.
Narcolepsy: it is the inability to regulate our sleep / wake cycles. This results in an irresistible urge to sleep and occasions in which you fall asleep for several seconds to minutes throughout the day. For instance, a person with narcolepsy may be in the middle of a stimulating conversation and fall asleep on the spot. Narcolepsy can thus be potentially dangerous if, for instance, the person is driving.
Night terrors: it consists of waking up from sleep in a terrified state. It typically happens in the first few hours of sleep, during stage 3 or 4 of non-REM sleep. It happens more often in childhood.
Insomnia: it consists of having difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or both. It causes people to feel irritable, anxious, or even depressed.
Thus, adequate sleep is essential for our physical and mental health.
d- How to improve sleep
We can improve sleep by:
-going to bed at the same time each night
-turn off any gadget (TV, computer, cell phone etc.) before bed
-avoiding exercising right before bed
-avoiding eating a big meal before bed
II- Drugs
There are 4,000 plants that yield psychoactive chemicals, and humans have consumed such substances for 50,000 years. Thus, there seems to be a desire to alter consciousness in each of us... probably in order to reach a state of well-being, or rather "better-being". This idea is reinforced by the fact that other animals seek drugs to alter consciousness.
III- The Machinist (2004)
This is a movie that Guillaume Papa (also in the Internet course) advised me to see and I thank him for that.
a- A brief overview of the plot
The story is told from the main character's point of view. His name is Trevor Reznik, he is a machinist that suffers from insomnia. He is also abnormally skinny.
One day he is disctracted by an unfamiliar co-worker named Ivan, which makes him involved in an accident that causes one of his colleague to lose an arm. We understand that Ivan may be an hallucination, just as many other things that Trevor sees.
b- Insomnia in the movie
At the beginning of the movie, Trevor claims that he hasn't slept for a year. He also states that "no one ever died of insomnia". It occurs that both these statements are false.
Indeed, it is commonly admitted that we can probably survive longer without food than without sleep. Studies on animals indicate that death can occur even after "only" two or three weeks without sleep. Besides, the longest documented period of a human going without sleep is eleven days.
We can thus conclude that even though Trevor claims that he has not slept for a year, he has likely slept for small periods of time unknowingly.
This shows that there is much uncertainty in the movie about Trevor's sayings and his perception of reality. At the end of the movie, we of course get an explanation for all of that.
c- The scene from the movie
I've included a scene from the movie in my presentation. The scene is about Trevor being at Stevie's place. Stevie is a prostitute that somehow fell in love with Trevor, to the point that she promised him that she would stop having sex for a living. This scene involves a picture that Trevor cares about much because it is a picture of Ivan, that he previously lost. Trevor wants to use this picture to prove Ivan's existence to his colleagues, who don't believe in it.
We see in this scene that insomnia is able to lead to extreme hallucinations and paranoia.
Conclusion
I've had a nice experience making this presentation and I learnt a lot!
This is why I encourage you to take a look at the links below.
Click here to go to the mooc I've followed on udacity
Click here to see my prezi presentation
Click here to see the interview about narcolepsy on youtube
Click here to see the interview about night terrors on youtube
Click here to see the video about alcoholic monkeys on youtube
Click to see the scene from The Machinist on youtube
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