One third of your life is spent in the seemingly lifeless state called sleep. For the average person, sleep occurs 8 hours per day, 56 hours per week, 224 hours in a month, and 2,668 hours in one year. This means that when you reach the age of 75, you will have spent 25 years sleeping. In the early years of a child's development, the majority of the day is spent sleeping. Sleep is a process, which is necessary for humans to maintain life, just like food and water. Sleep is a very active state, despite the fact that your muscles are relaxed, your eye's are closed and you're unresponsive to light and sound. What is active during sleep is the brain. The brains activity is measured by connecting electrodes to the scalp, and then connecting the electrodes to an electroencephalograph. With the electroencephalograph they get an encephalogram (EGG), which displays "brain waves." With the EGG patterns we can see that sleep has a regular cycle, which it follows every night (Kassin 142). This pattern of sleep has two basic modes: non-REM (NREM) and REM sleep, also called paradoxical sleep. (Kassin 143)
             Non-REM sleep occurs in 4 stages. After the cycle from stage 1 to 4 occurs, stages 2 and 3 are repeated backwards. These stages last from 5 to 15 minutes each on average making the total initial non-REM sleep lasting from 90 to 120 minutes. Stages 3 and 4 is also referred to as Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) due to it's qualities of having very slow brain wave activity with great amplitude. The brain slows down in these four stages with stage 1 having the most activity, and 4 having the least, decreasing in sequential order, then increasing as it goes back through stages 3 then 2. (Lee)
             Stage 1 of NREM sleep is drowsiness, or falling into sleep. This stage usually doesn't exceed 10 minutes. If you were to be aroused during this phase you probably wouldn't even know you were asleep.
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