Sleeping & Dreaming
About the exhibition | Online taster
Traces of Sleep
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For a taste of what you would see in the 'Traces of Sleep' section of Wellcome Collection's 'Sleeping & Dreaming' gallery, take a look at key exhibits above.
What happens while we are asleep? In every culture, people have speculated and theorised about the nature of sleep. It is frequently associated with other states of unconsciousness. Death, in particular, was long considered to be closely related to sleep.
It was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that scientists succeeded in making the traces of sleep visible. The refinement of the electroencephalogram (EEG) in the 1920s made it possible to prove that the brain is also highly active in sleep. Nowadays, a broad range of measurements can be taken in the sleep laboratory to draw up an individual sleep profile. This plays a key role in sleep research and medicine.