A research conducted by scientists at Washington State University have brought a new theory that people feel sleepy when parts of their brains are actually asleep.
Popular belief that there is a center in the brain that controls when to fall sleep and dictates the time to for one to drift off. However these researchers suggest that sleepiness results when independent groups of brain cells become fatigued and switch into a sleep state, even when an individual is awake.
When a threshold reaches and people doze off.
Krueger, one of the researchers insists if sleep were being directed by a control center, the whole brain would respond at the same time. However, he adds, the brain behaves like a self directing orchestra in which most sections are more or less in sync, but a few race ahead or lag behind at any given time.
According to him, when a person is sleepwalking, the neuronal groups needed for balance are in a wake state while those needed for consciousness are in a sleep state. On the other hand, in sleep inertia, enough neuronal groups are in a wake state for one to be awake in a general sense, but some groups are still in a sleep state.
