The Universal Pastime:sleep and rest explained

Acknowledgements
 About the author
 About the cover art
 Back cover
 Introduction
 Chapter 1:
 The struggle for existence in the economy of nature: from biology to the inevitable Time Crunch
 A brief history of life on earth and our place in time
 Time zero to the 'now'
 The division of labor as the key to complex living
 Complex living
 The sun and the cost of doing business
 Constraints in biology
 Chapter 2:
 Common solutions to common problems in nature
 Lessons from the eye
 Inevitable 'right-moves' in biology vs. chance. Construction of a daily timepiece --
how to tell the time with more than one clock?The master clock in the brains of mammals
 Principles of organization in time
 Daily organization in time is everywhere in nature
 Biological clocks are organized similarly but have different ticking mechanisms
 Model organisms in biology and their daily timepieces
 How biological timepieces are built in different lineages of organisms
 Time-shifting is rooted in ancient biology and causes common problems of sleep and daily organization in time
 Living on altered time is bad for health
 Chapter 3. The view from the ground upSome hard problems
 The illusion of 'homeostasis'
 Finding a place for REM sleep
 Sleep has a purpose and therefore a function
 The problems differentiating primary from secondary functions of sleep
 Aristotle's 'final cause' leads to the purpose and therefore the function of sleep
 The primary function of sleep
 Do all animals sleep?
 Recapitulation
 Chapter 4:
 A construct to explain sleep
 Previous notions of sleep do not sit at the base of a unifying construct that explains sleep's function. The principles of Agency, Efficacy and Scope in the unifying explanation of sleep and its functionThe flexible brain navigates the fitness landscape and speeds up evolution
 Flexibility of behavior is a core biological property that is impaired by sleep disruption
 Explaining the illusion of 'sleep homeostasis'
 Experience and sleep across the lifespan
 Why do organisms sleep more after being awake longer?
 Chapter 5:
 Adaptable brains
 The building blocks of brains
 Molding the best fit to the conditions of existence. Nature and nurture are inseparable and work together to build adaptable brainsThe nuts and bolts of brain re-wiring
 Sleep and brain re-wiring
 Chapter 6:
 The brain waves of sleep
 The rhythms of the brain
 Brain waves and their interpretation in different animals
 No special explanation is necessary for REM sleep
 Replay and reliving of waking experience in sleep
 The hippocampus and memory
 Interpreting the replay of waking experience in sleep
 Sleep as a process of brain re-wiring for flexible behavior: From local to global brain phenomena
 Chapter 7.