Sleep Depth

Sleep Depth

(dreams)

A person sleeping heavily is sometimes said to be in a “deep sleep.” In experimental approaches to the study of sleep, sleep “depth” has been gauged in terms of how much of a given stimulus (how loud a sound or how bright a light) it takes to awaken a sleeping subject. Empirical sleep research has found that we usually sleep deeper early in the evening and lighter toward morning, although this pattern is superimposed upon another pattern in which the depth of sleep varies across ninety-minute cycles. In a typical ninety-minute cycle, a sleeper goes through at least four identifiable stages of sleep, which repeat throughout the evening. Sleep is deepest in Stage 4, the stage during which we have the fewest dreams.