What is the difference between sleep and unconciousness?  Hilary
h.fisher at law.uq.edu.au Sat Feb 24 22:01:53 EST 2001  > >I
don't know of any disease which causes one to lose the ability
to > >sleep, so I can't say. Run-of-the-mill insomnia isn't that
since it's > >just a out-of-sync biological clock. > What if
someone sustained damage to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which I
> been told controls circadian rhythm in the brain? Or for that
matter any > of the hypothalmus? > Someone else on a neurology
forum referenced a Cuban man who had > as a kid, which wrecked
his either thalamus or hypothalamus, and he didn't > sleep for
forty years. Apparently he "rested" or went into a light stage
of one > and tiny bits of two sleep, no 3, 4 or REM.  He needed
to "rest" though, > felt it akin to meditation. Anyways, they
couldn't induce any sleep with > medication on him. He was
apparently evauated at the Stanford Sleep Center > in the 80's
but I haven't been able to find any reference to this study.  I
saw a documentar