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What is the difference between sleep and unconciousness?

Theophilus Samuels theophilus.samuels at btinternet.com
Sun Feb 25 07:26:16 EST 2001


> I don't know of any disease which causes one to lose the ability to
> sleep, so I can't say. Run-of-the-mill insomnia isn't that since it's
> just a out-of-sync biological clock.

Use the following links about Fatal Familial Insomnia (quite literally, the
inability to sleep in the last stages of the disease):

http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~jcthomas/JCTHOMAS/1997%20Case%20Studies/A
Akroush.html
http://www.uni-marburg.de/sleep/enn/database/asdadefs/def3b4.htm
http://www.healthsci.utas.edu.au/pathology/cja308projects/priondiseases/jess
.html

and for further discussions regarding sleep and unconsciousness read a
modern day Neuroscience textbook like Kandel et al. (4th Edition).

T.L.S.

James Teo <james at teoth.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3a97cb8d.1337641 at news.freeserve.net...
> On Sat, 24 Feb 2001 02:55:53 GMT, thedeej at nospam.geocities.com (The
> Deej) wrote:
>
> >I have looked all over the web for the answer to this question and have
had
> >no luck in finding the answer. I am not a medical person, just a curious
> >layman (woman)trying to realistically write a character for a piece of
> >fiction.
> >
> >I am also wondering if someone had lost the ability to sleep, would
> >anesthetics have an effect?
>
> Sleep requires the loss of consciousness, but is very distinct from
> simply knocking your head on the wall and passing out. Sleep is an
> active process by which your brain makes itself turn off consciousness
> and turn on whatever weird thing it does. EEG changes in sleep also
> change in well-described sleep with distinct stages.
>
> I don't know of any disease which causes one to lose the ability to
> sleep, so I can't say. Run-of-the-mill insomnia isn't that since it's
> just a out-of-sync biological clock.
>







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