Research Paper on:
Normal Sleep Pattern Cycles and Physiology

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
or presleep (Benbadis et al, 2002). This period lasts approximately ten minutes until Stage II commences, lasting another fifteen minutes or so. Stage III is recognizable by "high-amplitude  delta activity" (Murray, 1995, p. 303) that ultimately turns into Stage IV. Stage IV, which typically begins an hour and a half after the initial sleep pattern has begun,  is the stage in which many people have difficulty reaching. Existing experiments have determined that physiological standards within the sleeping subject have "changed abruptly" (Murray, 1995, p. 303) in  the forty-five minutes that follow the onset of Stage IV. Indications of reaching this stage show how the EEG reading is maladjusted and the eyes flit from one side  to the other in a rapid fashion, which is indicative of REM sleep. Age, weight (body mass index) and activity levels have important  individual and collective impacts upon ones sleep patterns. An individual with normal weight and moderate activity levels appropriate to his or her age will achieve normal sleep patterns by  virtue of this normality; however, that does not necessarily preclude incidence of abnormal sleep patterns if other variables - stress, personal problems, etc. - also exist simultaneously. Of the  three components, age is said to be "probably the single most crucial factor (apart from the time since the last episode of sleep) that determines how humans characteristically sleep.  More so than gender, psychiatric illness and even, to a large extent, most physical illnesses, age is a major determinant of human sleep" (Anonymous, 1997, p. PG). From birth  to old age, one can readily chart the physiological aspects of normal sleep patterns as divided along the timeline of life. Under normal circumstances, newborns spend the vast majority of