You have a different type of blog assignment this week.
Rather than finding an article on which to reflect, I want you to listen to their radio program called Radio Lab. This episode is all about sleep and what it does for living organisms.
You can listen to the episode here. If you prefer, you can download the episode as well.
Once you have listened to it, you will put together a reflection. Your reflection should try to answer the following questions:
- What did you learn about sleep that you didn't already know?
- How does sleep help maintain homeostasis?
- How is sleep related to memory?
- What really struck you as cool or strange (or both)? Why?
- How did you like listening to the story rather than reading it? Was it easier or harder? What did you like about it?
- How did the reporters use humor to tell their story? Did it make the story more interesting?
- What would you like to know more about from what you heard?
I really look forward to your reflections.
1 comment:
• What did you learn about sleep that you didn't already know?
• How does sleep help maintain homeostasis?
• How is sleep related to memory?
• What really struck you as cool or strange (or both)? Why?
• How did you like listening to the story rather than reading it? Was it easier or harder? What did you like about it?
• How did the reporters use humor to tell their story? Did it make the story more interesting?
• What would you like to know more about from what you heard?
What did you learn about sleep that you didn’t already know? Something that I learned from the broadcast was that, even though we think it’s weird sleeping with only half your brain is asleep at a time, it really isn’t at all. It’s just a way to not get eaten and turned into some lovely, friend little fox’s dinner. Or a shark. Or just anything in general. It doesn’t really matter, the point is, it’s stopping you from being eaten, and we’re actually the odd ones out (since our whole brain sleeps at the same time) What’s kind of weird though is that we sleep the same amount as the animals resting half their brain at a time. . shouldn’t we rest half as much?
How does sleep maintain homeostasis? Sleep maintains homeostasis since it’s pretty much the reason that your organs haven’t completely. . died from working constantly. If we didn’t sleep, then we’d be working our bodies to the extreme all the time, and we’d eventually kill ourselves because our organs would never have a chance to rest and regenerate all the dead cells. Sound fun? No? I didn’t think so.
How is sleep related to memory? While you’re awake, during the day, out and about in the great big happy world, your brain is always making new connections. Then, when you go to sleep, some of those connections that you made (like what Larry said to Bob behind you in math class) get weaker and you can’t remember them as well. Other connections, like playing a guitar or pitching steps, that you’ve practiced a bunch, get even stronger. While you sleep, your brain sorts through all of these different memories and figures out which ones it wants to keep and which ones it wants to get rid of.
What did I find really weird, cool or both? I thought it was kind of weird that we’re actually the odd ones out of most of the natural world, in that both halves of our brains sleep at the same time (but it makes perfect sense, when you think about it.) One thing that actually like, really freaked me out was the sound that a cat’s brain makes when it’s sleeping. I don’t really know where that sound’s coming from (computer generated from activity..?) but it’s really crazy to hear that when you’re asleep your brain’s making all that noise.
What did I think of listening to the story instead of reading it? I thought that listening to the story was easier since when I listened to it I was doing about a million other things and I know that if I’d had to read it I never would’ve finished. For this particular thing as well, listening to the story was great because you never would’ve been able to hear the sound of a cat’s brain while it was sleeping through an article on msnbc.com or something. It was a little bit harder though because you couldn’t go back to parts you missed easily (you usually ended up having to listen to 5 minutes of stuff you actually did understand to hear that one line again) but overall, I think it was a better idea to listen to it (especially because there was a ton of other work to do at the same time)
What did I think of the reporters using humor to make the story better? Personally. . I thought that they were really, really not funny. At all. They just made the story seem kind of cheesy and dumb. It would have been better off without.. or at least get reporters who’re actually funny.
I want to know more about how they got the sound of a cat’s brain while it’s sleeping, and I wanted to know more about. . why scientists don’t know like anything about sleep.
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