Neuroscientist say that humans and animals need to sleep for two reasons: the 1st one is simply logical: Vegetarian animals would be more in danger if they walked around at night, and predators would be much more inefficient during daytime. So its something like a hiding-enegry conserving mode. The second reason is the two "modes" that parts of the brain works during awakeness and sleep. That means that parts of the brain (especially hippocampus, a part which is used for deciding what memory is important and storing it) work differently during awakeness and sleep. The hippocampus is during the awake phase in a "exploration" mode, where it focuses on retrieving new data, and storing it temporary. If you fall asleep it goes into "storing" mode where the hippocampus decides what data to throw away, and what should be kept.(for example order the TV ads that you have seen between two films yesterday is is not really important.)These two modes have even been obresved in experiments, different regions and inputs are active in the hippocampus. It has been shown by researchers that when you learn something youll be better in remembeing it in the next day.(better means more organized, youll see more coherences in what you learned). PS sorry for my english im not from the usa. PS2 im a hippocampus researcher
the 1st one is simply logical: Vegetarian animals would be more in danger if they walked around at night, and predators would be much more inefficient during daytime. So its something like a hiding-enegry conserving mode.
The second reason is the two "modes" that parts of the brain works during awakeness and sleep. That means that parts of the brain (especially hippocampus, a part which is used for deciding what memory is important and storing it) work differently during awakeness and sleep. The hippocampus is during the awake phase in a "exploration" mode, where it focuses on retrieving new data, and storing it temporary. If you fall asleep it goes into "storing" mode where the hippocampus decides what data to throw away, and what should be kept.(for example order the TV ads that you have seen between two films yesterday is is not really important.)These two modes have even been obresved in experiments, different regions and inputs are active in the hippocampus. It has been shown by researchers that when you learn something youll be better in remembeing it in the next day.(better means more organized, youll see more coherences in what you learned).
PS sorry for my english im not from the usa.
PS2 im a hippocampus researcher