Sleep spindle

From Psychology Wiki

A Sleep spindle is burst of brain activity visible on an EEG that occurs during stage 2 sleep. It consists of 12-16 Hz waves that occur for 0.5 to 1.5 seconds.

[edit] Uses of Sleep Spindles

Sleep spindles are one of several measures employed by the brain to keep a sleeper in an unconscious state. This pattern is produced during sleep to inhibit the processing of unnecessary information, which would especially interrupt stage 2 sleep. This is why they are defining characteristics (along with K complexes of stage 2 sleep. During deeper stages (3 and 4) subjects are more difficult to awaken (with the exception of the transitory stage 1).

This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Sleep spindle. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.