Sleep: Art and Science

Sleep: Art and Science

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 endeavors? Science is usually recognized, among other signs, by its methodology (the rigorous scientific method), the replicability of results and theories supported by evidence.

A beautiful yellow-haired fairy in a fantasy world. Fantasy art stems from the literary genre fantasy, centering on magic and other supernatural phenomena. Image: Copyright © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Amazingly enough, at times science meets art in unusual ways (aside from cartoons about neuroscience), 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.

Which thoughts spring to mind when looking at such pictures? Science fiction and fantasy stories often involve portals allowing travel between alternate worlds, realities and times. Image: Copyright © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

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…

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.

Copyright © 2011 Megan Jorgensen. All rights reserved.

A dream. Photo by Elena