Hey, Lenore --
A stab at your question:
Warming the POAH (pre-optic area and anterior hypothalamus) causes
drowsiness, so the fatigue and sleepiness that comes from a warm room or
warm day is probably related to higher brain temps (if they directly
warm POAH, animals go to sleep -- as they do if it is electrically
stimulated).
My problem is with the second statement: are we really more "alert" when
body temperature is higher? I don't know so much about that. People
with fevers are not more "alert," in a cortical sense. It is true that
a sleeping brain is slightly cooler than an awake brain, but I'm not
sure that it follows that a warmer brain is more alert than a cooler
brain -- within limits.
Did the text supply any data for the latter conclusion? Reading Carlson
leads me to think that an awake brain is warmer than a sleeping brain,
not that a warm brain makes for an awake ("alert") person. It sounds to
me that the causal arrow points from awake -> temperature in the "alert"
case, and from temperature -> sleepiness in the other.
But I am not sure, and think I have even confused myself.
m
-------
"Whatever power the United States Constitution
envisions for the Executive in its exchanges with
other nations or with enemy organizations in times
of conflict, it most assuredly envisions a role
for all three branches when individual liberties
are at stake."
---
July 20,2006
US District Court for Northern California
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Frigo, Lenore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 2:05 PM
> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
> Subject: [tips] sleep and temperature
>
>
>
> In an intro psych text, we get these two items. Same chapter,
> different sections:
> a) The higher the body temperature, the more alert people
> are; the lower the body temperature, the sleepier they are.
> b) Warm room temperature can make a person sleepy.
>
> Granted, body temperature and room temperature are not the
> same thing, but the two statements seem to be in conflict.
> What's the missing piece to explain it all?!
>
>
> -Lenore Frigo
> Shasta College
> Redding, CA
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> ---
> To make changes to your subscription go to:
> http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mo
> de=0&lang=english
>
>
---
To make changes to your subscription go to:
http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
