Extensive Listening: Week 4 Another lecture from TED Talks and An introduction on how to write a summary

Purpose? What's been our purpose in our listenings so far?

Purpose Today: To write a summary How do we write a summary?

Our Listening Russell Foster “Why do we sleep?”

Why you should listen to him “Much as your ear does double duty (balance plus hearing), Russell Foster posits that the eye has two jobs: creating vision, but also -- as a completely separate function -- managing our perception of light and dark, providing the clues that our circadian rhythms need to regulate sleep-wake cycles. He and his team at the University of Oxford are exploring a third kind of photoreceptor in the eye: not a rod or a cone but a photosensitive retinal ganglion cell (pRGC) that detects light/dark and feeds that information to the circadian system.

As Foster explains: 'Embedded within our genes, and almost all life on Earth, are the instructions for a biological clock that marks the passage of approximately 24 hours.' Light and dark help us synchronize this inner clock with the outside world. The research on light perception hits home as we age -- faced with fading vision, we also risk disrupted sleep cycles, which have very serious consequences, including lack of concentration, depression and cognitive decline. The more we learn about how our eyes and bodies create our sleep cycles, the more seriously we can begin to take sleep as a therapy.” (Taken from

Okay, now write a summary!

The summary I wrote... In the TED Talk called “Why do We Sleep” presented by Russell Foster we learn how important sleep's role in our life is, and why we should make sleep an important part of our lives. He begins by reminding us that sleep was regarded important in the past before the invention of the light bulb, but today we despise sleep and consider it a sickness. There are some theories that explain why sleep is so important. He believes that the restoration and brain processing that happens during sleep are both good and proven theories. However, we are living in a time when people are not getting much sleep and its affecting us in many ways. It is causing us to have poor judgment, use drugs and caffeine, gain weight, and be overly stressed. The stress in itself can cause many problems.

He then tells us how to know if we are sleep deprived, and how to get a good nights rest. We mostly need to make our bedrooms comfortable places and avoid caffeine and bright lights right before bed. Myths about sleep exist too and need to be addressed. His last major point discusses recent findings on sleep and mental illness. Actual connections of genes have been found between mental illness and a lack of sleep, and he hopes that we can use this information to help those who suffer from it. Overall this lecture hopes to change our opinion about sleep and inform us on the dangers of sleep deprivation.

Listen For and Make Guesses What does Shakespeare say about sleep? What does Margaret Thatcher say about sleep? What's the hypothalamus? What's it do? What's jet lag? Explain his “Sleep for Dummies” Give a definition of sleep disruption What do you think schizophrenia is?

Homework This week you will write a journal entry about a lecture that you listen to Also write this same listening on your listening log. You do not need to write much info there as you are already writing a journal entry