Understanding Sleep Cycles · 09 / Put it into practice

What would you do?

Five everyday situations about stages, timing and sleep pressure. Choose the answer that best fits what you have explored. You can try again, and you will get an explanation for every answer.

Pass mark: 70% — with five questions, that means at least four correct answers. All questions need an answer.

1. Nina wakes without remembering any dreams. Which conclusion fits best? She had no REM sleep.Dream recall alone cannot tell her how much REM she had.She spent the entire night in N3.

2. After travelling across time zones, Jo is exhausted but alert at local bedtime. What is a likely explanation? Her sleep pressure has disappeared completely.Her sleep cycles have stopped occurring.Her body clock is not yet aligned with the local schedule.

3. A coffee makes Lee feel more alert after a short night. What has most likely changed? Caffeine is masking some sleepiness; it has not replaced the missed sleep.Caffeine has removed the biological need for sleep.Caffeine has restored the REM sleep missed that morning.

4. Pat wants to set an alarm in exact 90-minute blocks and cut sleep shorter to fit. What is the best advice? Exact blocks guarantee waking at the ideal stage.Cycle lengths vary; enough sleep is more useful than an exact calculation.Only the number of cycles matters, regardless of total sleep.

5. A sleep study describes N3 sleep with slow brain waves early in the night. Which stage is it describing? REM sleep, the stage with rapid eye movements.N1, the transition from wakefulness.Deep non-REM sleep.