Abstract
Sleep reminds us every day that consciousness is something that can come and go, grow and shrink, depending on how our brain is functioning. Everyone is familiar with the impression of nothingness that lies in between our falling into and awakening from dreamless sleep. Of course, blank reports upon awakening from sleep are not the rule and many awakenings, especially from rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, yield dream reports, and dreams can be at times as vivid and intensely conscious as waking experiences. Dream-like consciousness also occurs during various phases of slow wave sleep, especially at sleep onset and during the last part of the night. Nevertheless, there are always a certain proportion of awakenings that do not yield any dream report, suggesting a marked reduction of consciousness. Such “empty” awakenings typically occur during the deepest stages of NREM sleep (stages 3 and 4), especially during the first half of the night. Understanding why consciousness fades during certain phases of sleep is important not just with respect to brain function during sleep, but first and foremost because it can help us in identifying what is really necessary and sufficient for the brain to give rise to conscious experience.
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Tononi, G., Massimini, M. (2008). Sleep, Consciousness and the Brain: A Perturbational Approach. In: Fuchs, A., Jirsa, V.K. (eds) Coordination: Neural, Behavioral and Social Dynamics. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74479-5_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74479-5_12
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