Need for Sleeping

Sleep is a mystery. Scientists do not know why we need sleep. But, adults know they need sleep and parents know children need sleep. Other living beings need sleep. But why? Resting restores our body, so rest should be enough.

Scientists hypothesize - that is, they suggest a solution based on what they know and follow up this hypothesis with experiments - that our bodies require sleep so our brain can process what we have learned during the day.

Scientist Dr. Indrani Ganguly-Fitzgerald used fruit flies in a series of experiments. She learned that when flies used their brains, they needed more sleep. It starts when flies are very young – they need a lot of sleep like babies – and the need to sleep continues as the flies get older.

In her experiment, she kept some young flies in a tube by themselves. They did not sleep much. Some other young flies were put together with older flies in a big jar and they needed a lot of sleep because they had been taking in information from the other flies.

Tests with older flies showed that they needed sleep to, for their brains to process the information they learned during the day.