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CrowdScience: Why don’t we fall out of bed when we’re asleep?

Discussion & Talk

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18/11/2022 GMT

Why don’t we fall out of bed when we’re asleep?

BBC World Service - CrowdScience, Why don’t we fall out of bed when we’re asleep?

Answering the sleep questions that have been keeping CrowdScience listeners awake.

Why do some people laugh in their sleep? And why do we need sleep anyway? Can’t we just rest? CrowdScience answers the sleep questions that have been keeping listeners awake.

Why don’t we fall out of bed when we’re asleep? That’s the question that’s been keeping CrowdScience listener Isaac in Ghana awake, so presenter Alex Lathbridge snuggles up with some experts to find the answer.

We get a lot of emails about sleep, so we’ve gathered together some of our favourite questions and put them to academics working on the science of snoozing.

We’re wondering why some people laugh in their sleep, why some people remember their dreams and not others, and why we need to sleep at all  - can’t we just rest?

Our slumber scholars tell us about how our bodies continue to gather information while we’re asleep, how the tired brain is more likely to remember negative experiences, how we mimic other people in our sleep, and how sleep makes you more attractive to other people.
And Alex takes a trip to the zzzzoo to meet some animals that have very different sleep patterns to humans. It’s his dream assignment.


Contributors:
Vanessa Hill, University of Central Queensland
Professor Russell Foster, University of Oxford
Mark Kenward, Drusillas Zoo Park

Presented by Alex Lathbridge
Produced by Ben Motley for the BBC World Service

[Image: Man Falling into bed. Credit: Getty Images]

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