Fur seals can switch off and on R.E.M. sleep when they're in the sea and on land, a pattern never seen before. Scientists believe it might mean R.E.M. sleep helps generate heat in our skulls, like shivering for the brain.Credit...Mickrick, via Getty Images On a December evening in 1951, Eugene Aserinsky, a physiologist at the University of Chicago, placed electrodes on the scalp of his 8-year-old