Wayne Cole

Ms. Hansen

Composition II

16 March 2022

Reflection Essay

In my literature review for my scholarly articles I went through each article and synthesized the important information as it related to my research topic; sleep. The purpose of writing this literature review was to better understand how my sources were connected to one another and how they are particularly relevant/useful to my main claim that I will write later in the school year. My intended audience for this paper was myself and my professor, it was mainly written for me because it can be a valuable resource to look at once I begin writing my research paper.

I hope that the readers of this literature review can take the information that I provided and come out better informed on the topic of sleep and why sleep is important to the body. After reading my paper I would like the reader to look into the sources that I presented and read them for themselves as they discover more about the topic of sleep and how it affects them.

Some other information that I would like to include in my paper is background research into the authors of the individual scholarly articles and the field of sleep study. These practitioners are very knowledgeable in the field of biology and medicine as well as other forms of medical research, this is because of the way sleep affects all systems within the body.

While writing this paper I strengthen my annotation skills and my ability to better interpret a text through writing. Going from my first draft to my second draft while writing this paper I went from a basic synthesized of the articles to better correlating connections between sources and showing how they have overlap that will help in future writings.

Wayne Cole

Ms. Hansen

RHET 1312-07

08 March 2022

Advances in Sleep Medicine

Sleep is a naturally occurring state of the mind and body, which is characterized by the altered state of consciousness. Sleep is vital for animals and humans. Research is being conducted in various situations in order to better understand how sleep affects organisms, both negatively and positively. Researchers have found advances in sleep medicine that will have effects on the overall health of an individual and also treat/cure prevalent diseases.

Once you enter sleep the brain goes through three distinct stages: wakefulness, non-rapid eye movement(NREM) sleep, and rapid eye movement(REM) sleep. In the scholarly journal of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, Anne Vassallli and Derk-Jan Dijk wrote Sleep function: current questions and new approaches. In this scholarly article researchers go over the regulation and function of sleep and dive into some basic questions regarding sleep. “Recent approaches to sleep have emphasized that sleep is emerging locally and regulated in a use-dependent(homeostatic) manner (Vassalli, Anne, Dijk).” Data suggests that sleep function can be better understood by analyzing sleep at many functional levels with its local homeostatic regulation within the body. While talking about traditional markers of sleep homeostasis there were overlaps between the scholarly article of The extraordinary Importance of Sleep, here it was also discussed how biomarkers may help predict individual performance after varying degrees of sleep loss.

Sleep research should be at the forefront of scientific advancement because of the major impact sleep has in all functions of the body. Professional sleep societies, like the Sleep Research Society, have identified a need for new strategic research in multiple areas that could benefit from access to and aggregation of large multidimensional datasets. In the scholarly article Scaling Up Scientific Discovery in Sleep Medicine: The National Sleep Research Resource a team of researchers have contributed to inform the medical community of a vital need for the “analysis of large volumes of data to provide opportunities to shift research from a focus on predicting group averages to predicting individual outcomes, as is needed to support the goals of precision medicine (Dean).” Aggregating this data also will provide opportunities to discover and replicate new physiological signatures for diseases or even disease risk. This article has tremendous overlap between The Extraordinary Importance of Sleep with both articles mentioning the way in which data is being interpreted in large datasets and patient outcomes. Researchers and medical practitioners are worried that data is being skewed from multiple factors, this skewing has led to undiagnosed sleep disorders that are plaguing an immense portion of the population.

Sleep disorders have been linked to sleep disruption, diseases, and mortality. Understanding that sleep loss can have interindividual differences in the vulnerability that a person may experience. In the scholarly journal of National Center for Biotechnology Information, Susan L. Worley wrote The Extraordinary Importance of Sleep. This scholarly article brings about the importance of sleep to medical professionals. Informing the readers on society standards regarding sleep and the impact sleep deprivation has on individuals; attention, cognition, and mood. “As connections between sleep disruption and both disease and mortality have become more firmly established, accurate and efficient diagnosis and management of sleep disorders have become increasingly critical (Worley).” In the uptick of a society that is receiving less and less sleep it has been shown from the other two scholarly articles that disruption of sleep and the circadian rhythm, as well as sleep homeostasis, have been linked to certain diseases; hypertension, and diabetes.

In these scholarly articles they delved deep into sleep research on the basis that sleep is vitally important for human bodily functions; such as tissue, heart, and blood vessel repair and the brain is ridding itself of toxic waste. The articles had numerous overlaps to one another in the form of how research can be better conducted to receive better patient outcomes, how to better collect and interpret data, to new research findings in the field of sleep medicine. These articles contain extensive research and talking points that will be helpful in gathering strong evidence to support why sleep research should be at the forefront of scientific advancement.

Work Cited

Vassalli, Anne, and Derk-Jan Dijk. “Sleep Function: Current Questions and New Approaches.” Wiley Online Library, European Journal of Neuroscience, 5 May 2009, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2009.06767.x.

Dean, D. A., Goldberger, A. L., Mueller, R., Kim, M., Rueschman, M., Mobley, D., Sahoo, S. S., Jaypandian, C. P., Cui, L., Morrical, M. G., Surovec, S., Zhang, G.-Q., & Redline, S. (2016, May 1). Scaling Up Scientific Discovery in Sleep Medicine: The National Sleep Research Resource. Oxford Academic. Retrieved March 4, 2022, from https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/39/5/1151/2454062?login=true

Worley, Susan L. “The extraordinary importance of sleep: The detrimental effects of inadequate sleep on health and public safety drive an explosion of sleep research.” P & T : a peer-reviewed journal for formulary management, MediMedia USA, Inc., December 2018, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6281147/#!po=50.0000. Accessed 12 February 2022.