Wakefulness

Wakefulness is a daily recurring brain state and state of consciousness in which an individual is conscious and engages in coherent cognitive and behavioral responses to the external world such as communication, ambulation, eating, and sex. Being awake is the opposite of the state of being asleep in which most external inputs to the brain are excluded from neural processing.

Effects upon the brain

The longer the brain has been awake, the greater the spontaneous firing rates of cerebral cortex neurons with this increase being reversed by sleep. Another effect of wakefulness (which may or may not be related to this) is that it lowers the small stores of glycogen held in the astrocytes that can supply energy to the brain's neurons—one of the functions of sleep, it has been proposed, is to create the opportunity for them to be replenished.

Maintenance by the brain

Wakefulness is produced by a complex interaction between multiple neurotransmitter systems arising in the brainstem and ascending through the midbrain, hypothalamus, thalamus and basal forebrain. The posterior hypothalamus plays a key role in the maintenance of the cortical activation that underlies wakefulness. Several systems originating in this part of the brain control the shift from wakefulness into sleep and sleep into wakefulness. Histamine neurons in the tuberomammillary nucleus and nearby adjacent posterior hypothalamus project to the entire brain and are the most wake-selective system so far identified in the brain. Another key system is that provided by the orexins (also known as hypocretins) projecting neurons. These exist in areas adjacent to histamine neurons and like them project widely to most brain areas and associate with arousal. Orexin deficiency has been identified as responsible for narcolepsy.

Awake (Donkeyboy song)

Awake is an English language hit in Norway for the Norwegian band Donkeyboy, their fourth single taken from their album Caught in a Life after singles "Ambitions" and "Sometimes" (both #1s for 13 and 8 weeks consecutively in the Norwegian Singles Chart) and "Broke My Eyes" (that reached #6).

"Awake" released in 2009 reached #8 in the Norwegian Singles Chart.

Charts

References

Awake (EP)

Awake is the first EP release from American rock band Bleed the Dream on their own label "Noize Pollution" in 2003.

Track listing

Personnel

Elegy (EP)

Elegy is a Maxi single/EP by symphonic metal band Leaves' Eyes, released on 2 May 2005. Almost all vocals are by the Norwegian singer Liv Kristine, with some backing "growls" by her husband Alexander Krull. The song "Elegy" is taken from the then upcoming album Vinland Saga, and a further track from that album, "Solemn Sea" is also included in demo form. The rest of the tracks are exclusive to this release, but unlike the following EP Legend Land, they do not share the Vinland theme.

Track listing

All lyrics written by Liv Kristine, all music composed by Alexander Krull, Thorsten Bauer, Mathias Röderer & Christopher Lukhaup.

Personnel

Leaves' Eyes

Production

Elegy (The Twilight Zone)

"Elegy" is episode 20 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Plot

Running out of fuel, astronauts Meyers, Webber, and Kirby land their spaceship on a remote asteroid in 2186. They find the place quite Earth-like with buildings and people, but after looking around begin to wonder where everyone is. The first place they come to is a farm where they can find no one. No one, that is, until they see a farmer gazing off into the distance. They approach him, tap him on the shoulder and try talking to him, but realize he is nothing more than a statue.

The men later come to a town hall in which a man is being elected mayor. There's a large audience and a band playing. They can hear music, but everyone and everything is dead-still. A beauty pageant, in which several lovely ladies are participating on stage, is where they find themselves next. Again there's a large audience and the sound of much activity, but no one is moving - as if they are frozen. Just as they leave the room, an old man in the audience suddenly turns around and smiles.

Elegy (The X-Files)

"Elegy" is the twenty-second episode of the fourth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It was written by John Shiban and directed by James Charleston. The episode aired in the United States on May 4, 1997 on the Fox network. It is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, a stand-alone plot which is unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "Elegy" earned a Nielsen rating of 10.6 and was seen by 17.1 million viewers upon its initial broadcast. The episode received mostly positive reviews from televisions critics; the performance of lead actress Gillian Anderson was especially praised.

The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, Mulder and Scully track a series of murders that lead to a home for the mentally ill and a clue that makes no sense: each victim has appeared as an apparition in the area where their body was found along with the words "She is me". Furthermore, the episode continues the storyline that concerns Scully's battle with cancer.