Dr. Michael Grandner

Um, but the waves are very different from waking brain waves, but it is, it is more, more like that than, than, um, than other stages of sleep.

You're also, your arousal threshold is different in that it's easier to wake up out of REM sleep, but.

There's also a couple of other weird things that happen that you're paralyzed.

So if in the deep sleep, your muscles were very relaxed, that's nothing compared to how relaxed your muscles are in REM sleep.

Not because they're recovering, but because you're actively paralyzed.

Your alpha motor neurons are hyperpolarized, you cannot move.

Even if you wanted to, that's because otherwise you'd be acting out your dreams because you think they're real at the time.

It's just part of your brain has its foot on the brake while it's jamming on the accelerator at the same time.

And that's why it's not going anywhere.

That's why sometimes you see twitches where it sort of breaks through a little bit, but that's it.

It's fascinating.

And then also that's also why you get sleep paralysis sometimes where you wake up at a REM sleep, but you're still a little bit paralyzed, but you're also conscious and that switch forgot to get flipped really briefly.

So anyway, so you get that REM sleep.

You also get the eye movements, which might be looking at things, but might not be.

It's the data are very mixed where when you, if you go looking to match eye movements and REM sleep to dream content, you can sometimes find it, but then sometimes you can't.

It's fascinating.

But what seems to be happening in between deep sleep and REM sleep, there's a really, really interesting dichotomy where they're both important.

For different reasons.

Or one of the things, the main thing that seems to be happening in the deep sleep is synaptic pruning and synaptic homeostasis.

And in REM sleep, there's a lot of synaptic strengthening and connection building.