Image for Sleep  Listen now 18 mins  Listen in pop-out player
18 minutes First broadcast: Friday 15 March 2013  The first of
two programmes which looks at human behaviour and sleep  Why do
we Sleep? At first glance, it seems a silly question but
actually it is one that’s been baffling scientists for decades.
We spend a third of our lives asleep, but sleep science hasn’t
got much further than being sure that we sleep because we get
sleepy.  As Mike falls into a deep slumber to the sound of his
own recording voice, we will find out exactly what happens when
we sleep, from circadian clocks to sleep spindles to the famous
REM, and how we have thought about this dark and private side of
our lives across ages and cultures.  We explore conflicting
theories about the purpose of sleep. One theory is that we
developed our sleep patterns to allow our body and mind to
repair itself at night. While we know our body grows and heals
while we sleep, we know much less about what our brain is doing
and a century after Freud