Sleep, a normal, reversible, recurrent state of reduced responsiveness to external stimulation that is accompanied by complex and predictable changes in physiology. These changes include coordinated, spontaneous, and internally generated brain activity as well as fluctuations in hormone levels and relaxation of musculature. A succinctly defined specific purpose of sleep remains unclear, but that is partly because sleep is a dynamic state that influences all physiology, rather than an individual organ or other isolated physical system. Sleep contrasts with wakefulness, in which state there is an enhanced potential for sensitivity and an efficient responsiveness to external stimuli. The sleep-wakefulness alternation is the most-striking manifestation in higher vertebrates of the more-general phenomenon of periodicity in the activity or responsivity of living tissue.

  • A giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) sleeping in a tree, Wolong Nature Reserve, Sichuan (Szechwan) province, China.
    A giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) sleeping in a tree, Wolong Nature Reserve, …
    Keren Su—The Image Bank/Getty Images

There is no single perfectly reliable criterion for defining sleep. It is typically described by the convergence of observations satisfying several different behavioral, motor, sensory, and physiological criteria. Occasionally, one or more of those criteria may be absent during sleep (e.g., in sleepwalking) or present during wakefulness (e.g., when sitting calmly), but even in such cases there usually is little difficulty in achieving agreement among observers in the discrimination between the two behavioral states.

The nature of sleep

Sleep usually requires the presence of relaxed skeletal muscles and the absence of the overt goal-directed behaviour of which the waking organism is capable. The characteristic posture associated with sleep in humans and in many but not all other animals is that of horizontal repose. The relaxation of the skeletal muscles in that posture and its implication of a more-passive role toward the environment are symptomatic of sleep. Instances of activities such as sleepwalking raise interesting questions about whether the brain is capable of simultaneously being partly asleep and partly awake. In an extreme form of that principle, marine mammals appear to sleep with half the brain remaining responsive, possibly to maintain activities that allow them to surface for air.

Indicative of the decreased sensitivity of the human sleeper to the external environment are the typical closed eyelids (or the functional blindness associated with sleep while the eyes are open) and the presleep activities that include seeking surroundings characterized by reduced or monotonous levels of sensory stimulation. Three additional criteria—reversibility, recurrence, and spontaneity—distinguish sleep from other states. For example, compared with hibernation or coma, sleep is more easily reversible. Although the occurrence of sleep is not perfectly regular under all conditions, it is at least partially predictable from a knowledge of the duration of prior sleep periods and of the intervals between periods of sleep, and, although the onset of sleep may be facilitated by a variety of environmental or chemical means, sleep states are not thought of as being absolutely dependent upon such manipulations.

In experimental studies, sleep has also been defined in terms of physiological variables generally associated with recurring periods of inactivity identified behaviorally as sleep. For example, the typical presence of certain electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns (brain patterns of electrical activity) with behavioral sleep has led to the designation of such patterns as “signs” of sleep. Conversely, in the absence of such signs (as, for example, in a hypnotic trance), it is believed that true sleep is absent. Such signs as are now employed, however, are not invariably discriminating of the behavioral states of sleep and wakefulness. Advances in the technology of animal experimentation have made it possible to extend the physiological approach from externally measurable manifestations of sleep such as the EEG to the underlying neural (nerve) mechanisms presumably responsible for such manifestations. In addition, computational modeling of EEG signals may be used to obtain information about the brain activities that generate the signals. Such advances may eventually enable scientists to identify the specific structures that mediate sleep and to determine their functional roles in the sleep process.

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In addition to the behavioral and physiological criteria already mentioned, subjective experience (in the case of the self) and verbal reports of such experience (in the case of others) are used at the human level to define sleep. Upon being alerted, one may feel or say, “I was asleep just then,” and such judgments ordinarily are accepted as evidence for identifying a pre-arousal state as sleep. Such subjective evidence, however, can be at variance with both behavioral classifications and sleep electrophysiology, raising interesting questions about how to define the true measure of sleep. Is sleep determined by objective or subjective evidence alone, or is it determined by some combination of the two? And what is the best way to measure such evidence?

More generally, problems in defining sleep arise when evidence for one or more of the several criteria of sleep is lacking or when the evidence generated by available criteria is inconsistent. Do all animals sleep? Other mammalian species whose EEG and other physiological correlates are akin to those observed in human sleep demonstrate recurring, spontaneous, and reversible periods of inactivity and decreased critical reactivity. There is general acceptance of the designation of such states as sleep in all mammals and many birds. For lizards, snakes, and closely related reptiles, as well as for fish and insects, however, such criteria are less successfully satisfied, and so the unequivocal identification of sleep becomes more difficult. Bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus), for example, seem not to fulfill sensory threshold criteria of sleep during resting states. Tree frogs (genus Hyla), on the other hand, show diminished sensitivity as they move from a state of behavioral activity to one of rest. Yet, the EEGs of the alert rest of the bullfrog and the sleeplike rest of the tree frog are the same.

Problems in defining sleep may arise from the effects of artificial manipulation. For example, some of the EEG patterns commonly used as signs of sleep can be induced in an otherwise waking organism by the administration of certain drugs.

Developmental patterns of sleep and wakefulness

How much sleep does a person need? While the physiological bases of the need for sleep remain conjectural, rendering definitive answers to this question impossible despite contemporary knowledge, much evidence has been gathered on how much sleep people do in fact obtain. Perhaps the most-important conclusion to be drawn from the evidence is that there is great variability between individuals and across life spans in the total amount of sleep time.

Studies suggest that healthy adults between ages 26 and 64 need about 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. Adults over age 65 need roughly 7 to 8 hours. Increasing numbers of people, however, sleep fewer than 7 or more than 8 hours. According to sleep polls taken in the United States in 2009, the average number of persons sleeping less than 6 hours per night increased from 12 percent in 1998 to 20 percent in 2009. During that same period the average number of persons sleeping more than 8 hours decreased from 35 percent to 28 percent. Sleep time also differs between weekdays and weekends. In the United States and other industrialized countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, adults average less than 7 hours of sleep per night during the workweek. For Americans, that average increases only slightly, by an average of 30 minutes, on weekends. However, sleep norms inevitably vary with sleep criteria. The most precise and reliable figures on sleep time come from studies in sleep laboratories, where EEG criteria are employed.

The amount and characteristics of sleep vary significantly according to age. The newborn infant may spend an average of about 16 hours of each 24-hour period in sleep, although there is wide variability between individual babies. By about the sixth month of life, many infants are able to sustain longer sleep episodes and are beginning to consolidate sleep at night. That sleep period is typically accompanied by morning and afternoon napping. During the first year of life, sleep time drops sharply, and by two years of age it may range from 9 to 12 hours.

Sleep duration recommendations for toddlers (age 1 to 2) range from 11 to 14 hours and for preschoolers (age 3 to 5) from 10 to 13 hours, which includes time spent napping. Only a small percentage of 4- to 5-year-old children nap; for most, sleep is consolidated into a single nighttime period. A gradual shift to a later bedtime begins in school-age children (age 6 to 13), who have been estimated to need between 9 and 11 hours of sleep. Adolescents between ages 14 and 17 need at least 8.5 hours of sleep per night, while young adults (age 18 to 25) need at least 7 hours. Most individuals in those age groups, however, sleep fewer than 7 hours. Sleep durations outside the recommended ranges (e.g., as few as 7 or 8 hours or as many as 12 hours in some school-age children) may be normal. Youths whose sleep deviates far from the normal range (e.g., in school-age children, less than 7 hours or more than 12 hours) may be affected by a health or sleep-related problem.

Similar to adults, children and adolescents in some societies tend to show discrepancies between the amounts of sleep obtained on weekday nights versus the weekend or non-school-day nights, typically characterized by marked increases during the latter. Reduced sleep on weekday nights has been attributed to social schedules and late-night activities, combined with an early school start time. Sleep disorders and modern lifestyle habits (e.g., use of electronic media in the bedroom and caffeinated beverages) also have been implicated in influencing the amount and quality of sleep in those age groups.

In older individuals (age 65 and over), sleep duration recommendations are between 7 and 8 hours. Decreases to approximately 6 hours have been observed among the elderly; however, decreases in sleep time in that population may be attributed to the increased incidence of illness and use of medications rather than natural physiological declines in sleep.

It is important to emphasize that the amount of sleep a person obtains does not necessarily reflect the amount of sleep a person needs. There are significant individual differences in the optimal amount of sleep across development, and there is no correct amount of sleep that children, teenagers, or adults should obtain each night. As a rule of thumb, the right amount of sleep has been obtained if one feels well rested upon awakening. Some persons chronically deprive themselves of sleep by consistently obtaining too little sleep. Such people are often, but not always, sleepy. Although it is generally accepted that a person would not sleep more than needed, there are instances in which a person with disordered sleep might attempt to compensate, knowingly or not, by obtaining more sleep. Healthy sleep is likely a combination of both quantity and quality, with only limited means of making up for poor-quality sleep by expanding the time spent in sleep.

Studies of sleep indicate that it tends to be a dynamic process, fluctuating between different regularly occurring patterns seen on the EEG that can be considered to consist of several different stages, although that classification remains somewhat arbitrary. Developmental changes in the relative proportion of sleep time spent in those stages are as striking as age-related changes in total sleep time. For example, the newborn infant may spend 50 percent of total sleep time in a stage of EEG sleep that is accompanied by intermittent bursts of rapid eye movement (REM), which are indicative of a type of sleep called active sleep in newborns that in some respects bears more resemblance to wakefulness than to other forms of sleep (see below REM sleep). In children and adolescents, REM sleep declines to about 20 to 25 percent of total sleep time. Total sleep time spent in REM sleep for adults is approximately 25 percent and for the elderly is less than 20 percent.

Quiet non-REM (NREM) sleep in the newborn infant is slower to evolve than REM sleep. At 6 months (sometimes as early as 2 months) of age, substages of light and deep NREM sleep are seen. Indeterminate (neither active nor quiet) sleep in newborns occurs at sleep onset as well as sleep-to-wake and active-to-quiet NREM sleep transitions. NREM sleep in the child may be distinguished from that seen in the adult, because of the greater amount of higher-amplitude slow-wave activity in the brain. There is also a slow decline of EEG stage 3 (deep slumber) into old age; in some elderly persons, stage 3 may cease entirely (see below NREM sleep).

Sleep patterning consists of (1) the temporal spacing of sleep and wakefulness within a 24-hour period, driven by the need for sleep (referred to as “homeostatic sleep pressure”) and by circadian rhythm, and (2) the ordering of different sleep stages within a given sleep period, known as “ultradian” cycles. The homeostatic pressure increases with increasing time of wakefulness, typically making people progressively sleepy as the day goes on. For a typical adult, that is balanced by the circadian system, which counteracts homeostatic pressure by supplying support for wakefulness in the early evening. As circadian support for wakefulness subsides, usually late in the evening, the homeostatic system is left unbridled, and sleepiness ensues.

There are major developmental changes in the patterning of sleep across the human life cycle. In alternations between sleep and wakefulness, there is a developmental shift from polyphasic sleep to monophasic sleep (i.e., from intermittent to uninterrupted sleep). In infants there may be six or seven periods of sleep per day that alternate with an equivalent number of waking periods. With the decreasing occurrence of nocturnal feedings in infancy and of morning and afternoon naps in childhood, there is an increasing tendency toward the concentration of sleep in one long nocturnal period. The trend toward monophasic sleep probably reflects some blend of the effects of maturing and of pressures from a culture geared to daytime activity and nocturnal rest. In many Western cultures, monophasic sleep may become disrupted, particularly during adolescence and young adulthood. During those stages of life, sleep patterns show common features of irregular sleep-wake schedules, usually with large discrepancies between bedtimes and wake times on school nights versus nonschool nights, which can result in daytime sleepiness and napping. Those irregularities can also affect adults. Symptoms often interfere with the person’s daily schedule, warranting diagnosis with a circadian rhythm sleep disorder known as delayed sleep phase, which is characterized by a preference for later-than-normal bedtimes and wake times.

Among the elderly there may be a partial return to the polyphasic sleep pattern, with more-frequent daytime napping and less-extensive periods of nocturnal sleep. That may be due to reduced circadian influences or poor sleep quality at night or both. For example, sleep disorders such as sleep apnea are more common among older people, and even in healthy older people there is often an alteration of brain structures involved in sleep regulation, resulting in a weakening of sleep oscillations such as spindles and slow waves (see below NREM sleep).

Significant developmental effects also have been observed in the spacing of stages within sleep. Sleep in the infant, for example, is very different compared with the sleep of adults. The pattern of sleep cycles matures over the first two to six months of life, and the transition from wake to sleep switches from sleep-onset REM to sleep-onset NREM. The length of the REM-NREM sleep cycle increases across childhood from about 50 to 60 minutes to approximately 90 minutes by adolescence. In the adult, REM sleep rarely occurs at sleep onset. Compared with normal children and adult sleepers, infants spend the greatest amount of time in REM sleep.

In the search for the functional significance of sleep or of particular stages of sleep, the shifts in sleep variables can be linked with variations in waking developmental needs, the total capacities of the individual, and environmental demands. It has been suggested, for instance, that the high frequency of sleep in the newborn infant may reflect a need for stimulation from within the brain to permit orderly maturation of the central nervous system (CNS; see nervous system, human). As these views illustrate, developmental changes in the electrophysiology of sleep are germane not only to sleep but also to the role of CNS development in behavioral adaptation. In addition, different elements of sleep physiology are suspected to facilitate different components of the developing brain and may even exert different effects on the maintenance and plasticity of the adult brain (see neuroplasticity).

Psychophysiological variations in sleep

That there are different kinds of sleep has long been recognized. In everyday discourse there is talk of “good” sleep and “poor” sleep, of “light” sleep and “deep” sleep, yet not until the second half of the 20th century did scientists pay much attention to qualitative variations within sleep. Sleep was formerly conceptualized by scientists as a unitary state of passive recuperation. Revolutionary changes have occurred in scientific thinking about sleep, the most important of which has been increased appreciation of the diverse elements of sleep and their potential functional roles.

This revolution may be traced back to the discovery of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements (REM), first reported by American physiologists Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman in 1953. REM sleep proved to have characteristics quite at variance with the prevailing model of sleep as recuperative deactivation of the central nervous system. Various central and autonomic nervous system measurements seemed to show that the REM stage of sleep is more nearly like activated wakefulness than it is like other sleep. Hence, REM sleep is sometimes referred to as “paradoxical sleep.” Thus, the earlier assumption that sleep is a unitary and passive state has yielded to the viewpoint that there are two different kinds of sleep: a relatively deactivated NREM (non-rapid eye movement) phase and an activated REM phase. However, data, notably from brain-imaging studies, stress that this view is somewhat simplistic and that both phases actually display complex brain activity in different locations of the brain and in different patterns over time.

NREM sleep

By the time a child reaches one year of age, NREM sleep can be classified into different sleep stages. NREM is conventionally subdivided into three different stages on the basis of EEG criteria: stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3 (sometimes referred to as NREM 1, NREM 2, and NREM 3, or simply N1, N2, and N3). Stage 3 is referred to as “slow-wave sleep” and traditionally was subdivided into stage 3 and stage 4, though both are now considered stage 3. The distinction between these stages of NREM sleep is made through information gleaned from multiple physiological parameters, including EEG, which are reported in frequency (in hertz [Hz], or cycles per second) and amplitude (in voltage) of the signal.

In the adult, stage 1 is a state of drowsiness, a transition state into sleep. It is observed at sleep onset or after momentary arousals during the night and is defined as a low-voltage mixed-frequency EEG tracing with a considerable representation of theta-wave activity (4–7 Hz). Stage 2 is a relatively low-voltage EEG tracing characterized by typical intermittent short sequences of waves of 11–15 Hz (“sleep spindles”). Some research suggests that stage 2 represents the genuine first stage of sleep and that the appearance of spindles, resulting from specific neural interactions between central (thalamus) and peripheral (cortex) brain structures, more reliably represents the onset of sleep. Stage 2 is also characterized on EEG tracings by the appearance of relatively high-voltage (more than 75-microvolt) low-frequency (0.5–2.0-Hz) biphasic waves. During stage 2 these waves, which are also called K-complexes, are induced by external stimulation (e.g., a sound) or occur spontaneously during sleep. Sleep spindles and spontaneous K-complexes are present in the infant at about six months of age (sometimes earlier). As sleep deepens, slow waves progressively become more abundant. Stage 3 is conventionally defined as the point at which slow waves occupy more than 20 percent of the 30-second window of an EEG tracing. Because of slow-wave predominance, stage 3 is also called slow-wave sleep (SWS). Slow-wave activity peaks in childhood and then decreases with age. Across childhood and adolescence there is progressive movement toward an adult sleep pattern consisting of longer 90-minute sleep cycles, shorter sleep totals, and decreased slow-wave activity.

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Distinctions between sleep stages are somewhat arbitrary, and the true physiological boundary between stages is less clear than is described by these criteria. By analogy, the expression “teenager” is often used to refer to someone between ages 13 and 19, but there is only a subtle difference between a child of 12 years and 11 months and a child of 13 years and 0 months. The terminology serves to categorize different features, but it must be recognized that the boundary between categories is less clear physiologically than the distinction in terminology implies.


However, some experimental evidence shows that such potential functions for NREM sleep are not likely to be purely passive and restorative. Although brain activity is on average decreased during NREM sleep, especially in the thalamus and the frontal cortex, functional brain imaging studies have shown that some regions of the brain, including those involved in memory consolidation (such as the hippocampus), can be spontaneously reactivated during NREM sleep, especially when sleep is preceded by intensive learning. It has also been shown that several areas of the brain are transiently and recurrently activated during NREM sleep, specifically each time that a spindle or slow wave is produced by the brain. In addition to possible recuperative functions of NREM sleep, these activations may serve to reinstate or reinforce neural connections that will later help in optimizing daytime cognitive function (e.g., attention, learning, and memory). In the past these roles were almost exclusively hypothesized to be a function of REM sleep, partly because of the fact that in REM sleep EEG frequencies are faster and more similar to lighter stages of sleep and to wakefulness than they are to NREM sleep.

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