Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (book review)

This book is a well-researched survey of what happens to the mind and body when we sleep, and the terrible effects when we don’t sleep.

The most interesting sections, I found, were the ones detailing the cycles of NREM (slow electromagnetic waves) and REM (high frequency waves) — and their different effects on the brain. The analogy to a computer are interesting -that NREM serves to wipe clean and sever neural connections so we can forget things or reshuffle information, with the REM cycles allowing us to imagine, and be creative and stimulate and form new neural connections.

The other sad section was the effect of alcohol on memory and learning. They taught some kids linear algebra, and then tested them one week later. One group of kids did no drinking. Another drank the night after learning. The third group had 2 good nights sleep and drank the the third night after learning. Amazingly, even drinking a couple nights after learning a concept — you will lose your ability to synthesize and remember concepts by 40%!

While the book was well researched, I found a lot of the chapters to feel like reading a senior thesis or PhD dissertation, so a bit heavy and dry in places — with a lot of summaries of studies that I found to be silly and unethical — like if you deny rats a lot of sleep, did you know that they die after 15 days? Who dreams up these studies, who funds it, and how does that even sound like scholarship?

Rated 3/5 on Goodreads.