The Art and Science of Sleep

The Art and Science of Sleep

Art can take many forms: music, animation, literature, photography, design, painting, drawing and other illustrative or visual fine arts… the list goes on and on. But what about scientific endeavours? Science is usually recognized, among other signs, by its methodology (the rigorous scientific method), the replicability of results and theories supported by evidence.

Amazingly enough, at times science meets art in unusual ways, and the result can be quite intriguing. For example, the word SMURF refers to mythical blue creatures originally created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo. Notwithstanding, the identically sounding abbreviation stands for Smad Ubiquination Regulatory Factor (a ligase). Similarly, ROCK can mean a popular, somewhat rebellious musical genre, as well as Rho-associated kinase. Finally, the most famous of the Pokemons, Pikachu, lent his name to a protein discovered in Japan. Pikachurin is an essential protein-like polyssacharide in the brain.

Perhaps not as much as love and magic, but sleep has fascinated many an author or storyteller. From the legendary Sandman to stories about alternate worlds located in dreams, fictional accounts have often centered on this basic human function. While the relationship between sleep, neuroregeneration and neurorestoration is being looked into, it has largely been established that sleep aids memory and learning. In particular, scientists have shown that procedural memories (the type of implicit memory that aids skill formation) are greatly aided by getting enough sleep.

Further, experiments have demonstrated that in the absence of Zeitgebers (German for ‘time givers’) mice woke up a little later everyday, extending their chronological cycle. Interestingly, other research has documented that humans get used to a certain amount of hours of sleep (within reasonable limits), that they can change with training and habit. Also, sleeping may be classified into two types: REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement). Despite this, of course there are infinitely many types of dreams…

Light and noise are also important to sleep. Image: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

In conclusion, it seems that a text about sleep and art would be incomplete without Sleeping Beauty. She is the central protagonist of a folktale (Charles Perreault, Brothers Grimm, cultural variants, Disney animated film, etc.) in which a young princess falls under a wicked spell and ends up sound asleep until her Prince Charming one day wakes her up with a kiss. Today, most likely from the fairytale, many use the saying ‘beauty sleep’, referring to how much better one looks when well rested.