rileyjm

I would like to know if the reverse effect can be produced on women. Can women produce more testosterone in situations that would generally be considered more masculine? There seemed to be a very significant finding for men who just had newborns, perhaps it is triggered more by a major life event rather than specifically becoming a parent. For instance, does getting married reduce testosterone? Does losing a love one reduce it? Does moving to a new home? Makes for an interesting article and find(?) but I don't think it can be significant until it can be concluded that parenting specifically reduces that hormone.

The article makes for an interesting read, however, I am not entirely convinced that "polyphasic sleep" is necessarily effective or healthy. The article states that, "There’s no clearly defined biological reason for it, and it is intuitively an evolutionary disadvantage." This type of reasoning makes me believe that longer sleep periods are healthy and required, otherwise we would have evolved beyond that disadvantage. Dolphins have somewhat evolved beyond the "disadvantage" of sleep by remaining conscious in one half of their brain while they sleep. Granted... that is due to having to surface to breath, which is a circumstance humans do not have to cope with. Another point I noticed regarding this article that seemed a bit strange, is that the more "standard/normal" sleep cycles require only four REM cycles, while the "everyman-4 nap" or "uberman" require five and six REM cycles. If REM is the only relevant sleep cycle, shouldn't only four cycles be necessary across all sleep patterns?

Interesting chart. I found a similar chart, albeit much less artistic, specific to countries while browsing the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/08/06/business/06sp-r...