Category — Sleep

60 Minutes
The Science Of Sleep
Lesley Stahl Explores The Latest Findings In Sleep Research

Human beings spend on average one third of their lives asleep. We know we need to sleep but most of us have never really given a whole lot of thought to why.Why do we spend seven or eight hours a night immobile and unconscious? What really happens inside our brains and bodies while we’re sleeping?

We’ve known the purpose of our other biological drives for hundreds of years: we eat to give our bodies energy, we drink to keep hydrated, we procreate to perpetuate the species - among other things. But what is the biological purpose of sleep?

It turns out no one really knows for sure. As correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, why we sleep is one of the biggest unanswered questions in all of science, which is why researchers all over the country are doing studies and coming up with some new and intriguing discoveries. [Read more →]