Evolution of Sleep and Sleep Disorders
By Robert Frederick
An evolutionary anthropologist thinks there are three particular ways that natural selection has made our sleep different from that of other great apes.
March 30, 2016
From The Staff Biology Evolution
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We spend a third of our lives sleeping, but our sleep compared to other mammals stands out: We sleep for shorter periods of time, our sleep schedules are more flexible, and they include a higher proportion of REM sleep. In this podcast episode, American Scientist’s Robert Frederick spoke with Charles Nunn of Duke University about the factors that may have influenced the evolution of both our unusual sleep and our sleep disorders.
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