Biology – Quantitative Biology – Other Quantitative Biology
Scientific paper
2005-06-30
Biology
Quantitative Biology
Other Quantitative Biology
20 pages, 4 figures
Scientific paper
Sleep is one of the most noticeable and widespread phenomena occurring in multicellular animals. Nevertheless, no consensus for a theory of its origins has emerged. In particular, no explicit, quantitative theory exists that elucidates or distinguishes between the myriad hypotheses proposed for sleep. Here, we develop a general, quantitative theory for mammalian sleep that relates many of its fundamental parameters to metabolic rate and body size. Most mechanisms suggested for the function of sleep can be placed in this framework, e.g., cellular repair of damage caused by metabolic processes and cortical reorganization to process sensory input. Our theory leads to predictions for sleep time, sleep cycle time, and REM (rapid-eye-movement) time as functions of body and brain mass, and explains, for example, why mice sleep \~14 hours per day relative to the 3.5 hours per day that elephants sleep. Data for 96 species of mammals, spanning six orders of magnitude in body size, are consistent with these predictions and provide strong evidence that time scales for sleep are set by the brain's, not the whole-body, metabolic rate.
Savage Van M.
West Geoffrey B.
No associations
LandOfFree
Towards a Quantitative, Metabolic Theory for Mammalian Sleep does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Towards a Quantitative, Metabolic Theory for Mammalian Sleep, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Towards a Quantitative, Metabolic Theory for Mammalian Sleep will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-235610