[acb-hsp] "Dreamland"

[peter altschul]

"Dreamland": Inside the Mystery of Sleep
  August 14, 2012
  The opening scene of Marcel Proust's "Swannbs Way" is one of 
the most famously difficult to get through in literature.  That's 
not because of its style, which is sublime, but because it 
describes the experience of falling asleep.  Many susceptible 
readers nod off the first few times they attempt it.  All writing 
about sleep has this problem; of the fundamental human appetites, 
it's the least exciting.  The better you invoke it, the more 
likely you are to incite it, and because it canbt be remembered, 
sleep can't be described.  Nothing could be duller than watching 
someone else do it.  Only people who can't sleep spend much time 
thinking about it, and if there's anything more tedious than 
witnessing another person's nap, it's listening to a keyed-up, 
obsessive insomniac go on and on about how they can't.
  So kudos to David K.  Randall for writing what must be the most 
diverting and consistently fascinating book on the topic ever, 
"Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep." I feel I 
can speak with some authority on the subject because I've read 
quite a few sleep books in my time.  My interest arises from my 
own mild parasomnia, or sleep disorder, one that runs in my 
family.  We talk and sometimes walk in our sleep.  Randall 
suffers from the same condition, although of the two of us, he's 
the only one whobs truly stsufferedst from it.  A few years ago, 
he hurt himself when he collided with a wall while sleepwalking.  
It was the first time (he knows of) that he'd ever walked in his 
sleep, but every night his wife curls up at the far end of their 
"oversized" bed, wearing earplugs to shut out his btalking, 
singing, laughing, humming, giggling, grunting." Also, he kicks.
  If there's anything creepier than hearing someone laugh in 
their sleep, it's got to be another of Randall's propensities; he 
can fall asleep with his eyes open.  We deduce, therefore, that 
his wife is a woman of fortitude, but the sleepwalking incident 
freaked her out properly.  She insisted he seek treatment and 
Randall visited a sleep lab.  An uncomfortable night spent with 
electrodes taped to his head elicited the observation "you 
certainly kick a lot" and not much more.  Randall learned that 
"sleep is one of the dirty little secrets of science." We don't 
know as much about it as we should, or could.
  Hence, "Dreamland," a book that cleverly approaches a spectrum 
of sleep-related issues from the worst-case-scenario perspective.  
If you want to know how serious the problem of sleep deprivation 
can be, look at the U.S.  Army, which is only just coming to 
terms with the role lack of sleep plays in the 25 percent of 
American combat deaths resulting from friendly fire.  During the 
occupation of Iraq, soldiers sleeping less than four hours per 
night reported five times as many altercations with civilians as 
those who had the full eight.  Lack of sleep impairs a person's 
ability to make decisions, communicate with others and improvise 
effectively.  Well, we all know that, don't we? But learning how 
much blood and good will has been squandered as a result of macho 
attitudes toward soldiers' sleep needs (four hours a night -- for 
hardworking 20-year-olds -- really?) is sobering.
  Randall explores the significance of circadian rhythms -- the 
body's internal clock, which "tells an organism when it is time 
to perform an important activity and when it is time to rest" -- 
by looking at the lives of professional athletes.  Stanford sleep 
researchers, he relates, demonstrated that East Coast football 
teams labored under a permanent disadvantage in Monday night 
football games.  The games were always scheduled at 9 p.m.  EST, 
no matter where they were played, to maximize television 
viewership.  The average human body will bperk up around nine 
o'clock in the morning and stay that way until around two in the 
afternoon, which is when we start thinking about a nap.  Around 
six in the evening, the body gets another shot of energy that 
keeps us going until about 10 at night." A three-hour jet lag may 
sound minor, but it meant that West Coast teams always played at 
what their bodies thought was 6:00 p.m., a peak in the cycle, 
while their East Coast opponents played at a time when their 
bodies were winding down.  The point spreads reflected the 
difference.
  Perhaps the most bizarre material in "Dreamland" concerns 
sleepwalking, and specifically the responsibility a person has 
for any crimes he commits while asleep.  It happens.  If most 
sleepwalkers are like me -- barely able to bumble across the room 
before waking ourselves up -- a rare, unlucky few have been known 
to perform complex actions, like cooking or driving a car, while 
unconscious.  In 1988, a 23-year-old Toronto man was acquitted of 
murdering his mother-in-law while asleep.  Randall notes that 
"parasomnias seemed to be a particularly male trait," but I 
suspect that men, who are more prone to aggressive dreams in the 
first place, are more likely than women to engage in sleepwalking 
that presents a threat to others.  Attempting to strangle one's 
bed partner because you think he or she is an attacker is a 
classic example.  Less dangerous forms of sleepwalking, like my 
own, simply don't get reported.
  The most unusual thing I've ever done in my sleep is write a 
letter -- although I'd only managed the salutation before the 
difficulty of the task woke me up.  The next morning, the 
handwritten evidence of this incident spooked me.  It was like a 
message from a stranger I could never meet, but who just happened 
to inhabit the same body.  Whether I could be held responsible 
for this stranger's actions isn't a question I've ever had to 
face, but it's the kind of quandary that courts, legal scholars 
and a handful of neurologists have had to wrestle with.  One 
expert Randall interviews advocates a new classification for such 
crimes: "semi-voluntary." If the culprit knows he has a problem 
and doesn't take measures to control it, he holds at least some 
responsibility for the results.
  The concept of an unconscious mind has fallen out of 
intellectual favor, associated as it is with largely invalidated 
Freudian models of the self.  Yet some of the sleep-related 
subjects Randall covers in "Dreamland" do touch upon this 
territory, from dreams to the many accounts of people who, after 
having pondering a persistent problem, suddenly woke up with a 
fully formed solution.  Paul McCartney wrote the hit song 
"Yesterday" in just this way.
  It appears that, while asleep, the brain sorts through the 
day's events and lays down long-term memories, an administrative 
process that Randall describes as "cleaning up and organizing the 
mind's filing cabinet." This does not at all resemble the highly 
symbolic theater that human beings have imagined the dream 
landscape to be for millennia.  However, in a later sleep stage, 
once the initial tidying is over, the brain begins bfinding 
connections and associations with the data embedded in its memory 
cards,- a creative activity that looks an awful lot like 
thinking.  This makes the idea of an unconscious self seem less 
obsolete.
  "Dreamland" covers an abundance of other slumber-related 
issues, from sleep apnea to the importance of mattresses (which 
is negligible) to the interesting fact that most people sleep 
much better alone.  It's all weirdly fascinating, which -- trust 
me -- is a testimony to the lively curiosity, solid research and 
inventive angles that Randall brings to each aspect of his 
subject.  You almost certainly don't sleep the way you think you 
do.  There's much evidence to indicate that people are the worst 
possible information sources when it comes to their own sleep 
habits.  That's not surprising when you consider that they're 
unconscious for most of it.  It's remarkable to think that such a 
mundane activity should still be shrouded in so much mystery, but 
you couldn't find a more charming guide to what we do know than 
"Dreamland."