Adaptive Function of SleepAnother evolutionary hypothesis of sleep holds that our sleep patterns evolved as an adaptive responseto predatory risks, which increase in darkness. Thus we sleep in safe areas to reduce the chance of harm.Again, this is an intuitive and appealing explanation for why we sleep. Perhaps our ancestors spentextended periods of time asleep to reduce attention to themselves from potential predators. Comparativeresearch indicates, however, that the relationship that exists between predatory risk and sleep is verycomplex and equivocal. Some research suggests that species that face higher predatory risks sleep fewerhours than other species (Capellini et al., 2008), while other researchers suggest there is no relationshipbetween the amount of time a given species spends in deep sleep and its predation risk (Lesku, Roth,Amlaner, & Lima, 2006).It is quite possible that sleep serves no single universally adaptive function, and different species haveevolved different patterns of sleep in response to their unique evolutionary pressures. While we havediscussed the negative outcomes associated with sleep deprivation, it should be pointed out that thereare many benefits that are associated with adequate amounts of sleep. A few such benefits listed by theNational Sleep Foundation (n.d.) include maintaining healthy weight, lowering stress levels, improvingmood, and increasing motor coordination, as well as a number of benefits related to cognition and memoryformation.
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..
