My Adventure in the EEG (electroencephalograph) World

In August of 1999 and I had an appointment for an EEG (Hockenbury 142) the following morning. My parents were instructed to keep me awake for half of the amount of sleep that I would normally get. The doctor wanted to see if it would add any stress on my brain, to document any seizure activity that might occur. The next night I would sleep the whole night I knew that this would give me REM rebound. (146) But as a sixteen year old, I did not care about REM rebounds; all I wanted to do was sleep! My father rented movies that he believed I would enjoy in an effort to keep me awake. Watching these movies induced alpha brainwaves (142) and soon to be theta brainwaves. (143) In other words they were so boring.

After I struggled half of the night to keep awake, my mother woke me up at 6:00am for my 8:00 appointment. When I got to the doctor's office to have the EEG, I glanced around the room. All I saw was an old, uncomfortable, thin, metal table. The nurse instructed my mother to lift me onto the table and she did. As she laid me down, I felt the cold, hard metal on my skin while the sanitary paper crinkled. While I was lying there for about 15 minutes, the nurse put this blue play dough material in my hair. I thought, "How on earth am I supposed to obtain REM sleep? (142)

Once the electrodes (142) were hooked up to my scalp, I was put in a dark room. Due to the height of the table and my disability, I am afraid of falling off. In turn, this made it hard to even reach stage 1 NREM! (142) After a while, my mother came in to make sure that I was sleeping. Consequently, I was not. A few minutes longer went by and I was induced with a tranquilizer. (173) For some reason, my body rejected the effects of this tranquilizer. They could not get me to fall asleep!

The EEG lasted around 2-3 hours and in that time they could not make me fall asleep. I don't know the exact results were from this test but I can guess that they did not have any theta, delta or barely any alpha brainwaves. (142-143) Due to the combination of the high, cold, metal table and me having a crush on a boy since sixth grade, I could not sleep.

Once the EEG was completed, I realized that my melatonin (138) levels were increasing and wanted to fall asleep. They probably could have conducted the EEG over again, if I had fallen asleep but that is something that I never told my mother. That night, I was thankful to be in my bed and I did have REM rebound just like I thought I would. From my experience of being in this psychology class, I understand why I had to fall asleep during my EEG. Now I know there are four types of brainwaves going through my head during my sleep cycle.

Learn more about this author, Nicole Dayton.
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