Russell Foster's Tedtalk: How Does Sleep Relate To Psychology?

Why do we sleep? A question that everyone has asked before but never given a full answer to. In Russell Foster’s TEDTalk, “Why do we sleep” he explains the scientific side of sleep. Although, Russell Foster speaks about more than just sleep, he gives the audience something to think about throughout the TEDTalk. How does sleep relate to Psychology? What kind of experiments were done? Are there any personal stories that relate? These questions can be answered in one way or another.
A major question to be asked before diving into the scientific side of why we sleep is, how does sleep relate to Psychology? It’s simple. Psychology is the study of the human brain and its functions and without Psychology it would be difficult to understand why we sleep. Sleep is an important function that the brain does. People believe that the brain shuts down when we sleep, however it doesn’t. Sleep takes place in one area of the hypothalamus which includes the “biological clock”. “The biological clock tells us when it's good to be up, when it's good to be asleep” (Foster). Without this biological clock, or our circadian rhythm, our functions are messed up. With our circadian rhythms messed up, it results in sleep deprivation which will be talked about later. …show more content…
Scientists cannot fully answer why we sleep, but they can use multiple ideas to elaborate on the why we sleep. Some scientists use three main ideas which are; restoration (repair and restoration theory), energy conservation (adaption and protection theory), as well as processing and memory consolidation (learning and memory theory). There is another idea that is not specifically spoken about known as the growth and development theory. Foster does compare sleep to an airplane in a rather strange