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Outline one theory of the function of sleep.  

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Outline one theory of the function of sleep. There are two main theories in psychology offered to explain the function of sleep. One is called the ecological or evolutionary theory. The basis of this theory is that the reason why all animals sleep is because sleep serves some adaptive function. The notion of adaptiveness comes from the theory of evolution. The idea is that any behaviour that has continued in an animal's gene pool is because it must have been naturally selected because it, in some way, has helped promote the survival and reproduction of an animal possessing that characteristic. An important consideration, when thinking about the function of sleep, is to distinguish between different kinds of sleep: core sleep and other sleep. The two most important kinds of core sleep are slow wave sleep and REM sleep. It is possible that each serves a different adaptive purpose. One of the key criticisms...

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