![]() Separate systems of neurons handled information from different senses. The implications seemed straightforward enough. They identified regions of the brain that became active when people saw things, other regions that became active when they heard sounds, and so on through the list of senses. Neuroscientists have come a long way since the mid-1900s, when they launched their first efforts to map out the brain’s sensory pathways. Because the techniques our brains use to meld the senses are far from perfect, it turns out, we can fall prey to a variety of illusions-and to maddening confusion when Netflix delivers audio and video out of sync. Thanks to Netflix, I was confronted with one of the most crucial tricks that the human brain uses to make sense of the world: combining input from all five senses into a single, coherent experience, updated many times a second in virtually real time. I just couldn’t meld the two streams of information in my head. I would watch the characters speak, and then I’d switch to listening to them, and then I’d watch them speak again. ![]() It was only when people talked that I went batty. I didn’t care that the show’s trademark duh-dung! sound marking a new scene was still duh-dung-ing after the scene started. I didn’t care that the ominous soundtrack rose half a second late when Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe crept into the subway tunnel where they were about to find a body. Soon my irritation turned to puzzlement, and some self-observation allowed me to track my frustration to a precise source. ![]() While I was catching an old episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, the actors’ voices lagged a fraction of a second behind the movement of their mouths, making me so disoriented it completely ruined the show. On a good night, we cycle four or five times through several stages of sleep, each with distinct qualities and purpose-a serpentine, surreal descent into an alternative world.I don’t usually stream Netflix onto my television to probe the inner workings of my mind, but it had that effect not long ago. We all seem to cut corners, fighting insomnia through sleeping pills, guzzling coffee to slap away yawns, ignoring the intricate journey we’re designed to take each evening. Thomas Edison, who gave us light bulbs, said that “sleep is an absurdity, a bad habit.” He believed we’d eventually dispense with it entirely.Ī full night’s sleep now feels as rare and old-fashioned as a handwritten letter. In our restless, floodlit society, we often think of sleep as an adversary, a state depriving us of productivity and play. This is chiefly due to the proliferation of electric lights, followed by televisions, computers, and smartphones. The average American today sleeps less than seven hours a night, about two hours less than a century ago. “It seems as if we are now living in a worldwide test of the negative consequences of sleep deprivation,” says Robert Stickgold, director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Harvard Medical School. Yet an imbalance between lifestyle and sun cycle has become epidemic. When this circadian rhythm breaks down, recent research has shown, we are at increased risk for illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and dementia. The 2017 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to three scientists who, in the 1980s and 1990s, identified the molecular clock inside our cells that aims to keep us in sync with the sun. Our sleep-wake pattern is a central feature of human biology-an adaptation to life on a spinning planet, with its endless wheel of day and night. Everything we’ve learned about sleep has emphasized its importance to our mental and physical health.
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