Do the things we do every day affect our sleep? Can doing just one activity before going to bed lead to an increase or decrease in sleep efficiency? These are some of the questions I tried to answer in my experiments. I've always been curious about how sleep works and why we do it. I also wondered why one night's sleep is better than others. I understand that many factors are involved in sleep and I am not able to control all of these factors that impact your sleep and sleeping habits. But with this experiment, I did my best to study how activities affect your brain. For my experiment, the two activities I was studying were playing Call of Duty Ghosts and reading a book. When a person sleeps, they go through different cycles. As the person goes through these cycles, they respond to the different cycles the brain goes through. For example, when I go into REM sleep, I become paralyzed, but I'll explain more in a moment. The first stage is the first stage, during this stage you begin to "drift" and fall asleep. After the first step comes the second step. During the second stage, our brains will begin to produce short periods of rapid brain wave activity, known as sleep spindles, your body will also begin to lose heat, and your heart rate will calm down. During the third stage, slow brain waves, called Delta waves, will begin to occur. The third stage is between light and deep sleep. The fourth stage is deep sleep and sometimes called the delta sleep stage because of the delta waves created during the third stage. Finally, the fifth stage or REM sleep is where most dreams occur and the brain is most active. REM stands for rapid eye movement. REM sleep is sometimes called REM sleep because your brain becomes more active but...... middle of paper ...... sleep efficiency for video games was 82% and the average sleep efficiency for reading was 90%. After performing all the tests, I was able to conclude that reading a book can give you an 8% increase in your sleep efficiency and that playing a video game results in an 8% decrease in sleep efficiency. sleep efficiency. Works Cited Purves, Dale. “Stage Stages of Sleep.” Stages of sleep. US National Library of Medicine, January 18, 2000. Web. March 9, 2014. Smith, Melinda, Lawrence Robinson and Robert Segal. “How much sleep do you need?” » Sleep cycles and stages, lack of sleep and how to get the hours you need. Help Guide, October 2013. Web. March 9, 2014. .Walcutt, Diana L., PH.D. “Stage Stages of Sleep.” PsychCentral.com. Psych Central, January 30, 2013. Web. March 9. 2014. .