Every time I watch this stunning act of neural synchrony occurring at night in my own research laboratory, I am humbled: sleep is truly an object of awe. Returning to the analogy of the microphone dangling above the football stadium, consider the game of sleep now in play. The crowd—those thousands of brain cells—has shifted from their individual chitter-chatter before the game (wakefulness) to a unified state (deep sleep). Their voices have joined in a lockstep, mantra-like chant—the chant of deep NREM sleep.
