This data is pretty dated. Your brain compensates. There’s something called REM rebound to where if you don’t get enough sleep, your brain will offload as much REM as possible to the end of your sleep, filling in the missing and crucial sleep cycle.
How does your brain know when the end of your sleep is?
Is your brain a separate entity? You literally decide when to wake to with alarm. Or if you don’t set a time, it wakes you after x hours, after it’s backloaded all the REM.
If sleep deprivation gets too bad, it’ll completely knock you out to get as much REM in as it feels you need to function, alarm or no alarm.
Studying neurobiology/neuroendocrine systems is a great way to question who really is in charge.
It’s a lot of work man. Just being human. A lot… of work…
This is all well and good for people who can fall sleep right away, a 20 minute nap would mean an hour alarm since it would take 40 minutes before there is a possibility of napping.
Everyone is different though.
I will eternally be jealous of people who can fall asleep immediately and/or nap. Just falling asleep is like a 30-40 minute endeavour on a good day :(
