I just read this article from the net. I think it is worth to know more of science...
New Technology Replicates Deep Sleep Brain Waves
According to an article in the May 1st online edition of Science Daily (www.sciencedaily.com) the potential to unravel the mysteries of why we need to sleep and how sleep restores the brain is getting closer to being resolved. Giulio Tononi -- professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health (www.med.wisc.edu) -- has discovered how to stimulate brain waves that characterize the deepest stage of sleep. The discovery of these brain waves could be instrumental in shedding new light onto the role of sleep in keeping humans healthy, happy and able to learn.
The brain function in question -- which researchers refer to as "slow wave activity" -- is critical to the restoration of mood and the ability to learn, think and remember.
ScienceDaily.com described the use of a transcranial magnetic stimulation instrument -- also referred to as "TMS") -- to initiate slow waves in sleeping volunteers.
A follow-up article published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica (www.larepubblica.it) that focused on Professor Tononi (who is -- after all -- Italian) recounts that the TMS instrument sends a harmless magnetic signal through the scalp and skull and into the brain, where it activates electrical impulses. In response to each burst of magnetism, the subjects' brains immediately produced slow waves typical of deep sleep. So, with a single pulse, researchers are able to induce a wave that looks identical to the waves the brain makes normally during sleep.
In fact, ScienceDaily points out that Tononi has learned that the best location to place the TMS device is above a specific part of the brain, where it causes slow waves that travel throughout the cranium.
