Are you asleep? Exploring the mind’s twilight zone – life – 07 October 2009 – New Scientist.
For years scientists have had some ideas pretty firmly entrenched in the way we view sleep.
1) Sleep is for consolidating memories (but how many times have you stayed up all night studying and still scored fine on the test the next day? or on the flip side taken a 2 hour nap and forgotten it all?)
2) Sleep is a separate state of being than being awake. You are either one or the other.
New studies are showing that we might be blurring the lines more than we initially thought. Take for example, grogginess. These new studies are suggesting that grogginess is actually a blurred line between asleep and awake – the responsive portions of your brain are on-line but your memory recall centers are still down for maintenance.
