The Mathematical Structure of the Human Sleep-Wake Cycle |
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Author:
| Strogatz, Steven H. |
Series title: | Lecture Notes in Biomathematics Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-3-540-17176-8 |
Publication Date: | Nov 1986 |
Publisher: | Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
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Imprint: | Springer |
Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $54.99 |
Book Description:
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Over the past three years I have grown accustomed to the puzzled look which appears on people's faces when they hear that I am a mathematician who studies sleep. They wonder, but are usually too polite to ask, what does mathematics have to do with sleep? Instead they ask the questions that fascinate us all: Why do we have to sleep? How much sleep do we really need? Why do we dream? These questions usually spark a lively discussion leading to the exchange of anecdotes, last night's...
More DescriptionOver the past three years I have grown accustomed to the puzzled look which appears on people's faces when they hear that I am a mathematician who studies sleep. They wonder, but are usually too polite to ask, what does mathematics have to do with sleep? Instead they ask the questions that fascinate us all: Why do we have to sleep? How much sleep do we really need? Why do we dream? These questions usually spark a lively discussion leading to the exchange of anecdotes, last night's dreams, and other personal information. But they are questions about the func tion of sleep and, interesting as they are, I shall have little more to say about them here. The questions that have concerned me deal instead with the timing of sleep. For those of us on a regular schedule, questions of timing may seem vacuous. We go to bed at night and get up in the morning, going through a cycle of sleeping and waking every 24 hours. Yet to a large extent, the cycle is imposed by the world around us.