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Drug Reverses Effects of Sleep Deprivation
Ryan O'Rourke writes "According to a study led by Dr. Sam A. Deadwyler and published by the Public Library of Science Biology, a new drug called CX717 developed by Cortex Pharmaceuticals has been shown to reverse the biological and behavioral effects of sleep deprivation. Tests performed on monkeys that were subjected to 30-36 hours of sleep deprivation revealed an average test performance accuracy drop to 63 percent, but that performance was restored to 84 percent after administering CX717. During normal alert conditions, performance accuracy of the animals was improved from an average of 75 percent to 90 percent after an injection of CX717. It is also believed the drug may help prevent or restore memory loss in Alzheimer's patients."
The 167 hour work week!
Here
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I don't like this. Sleep deprivation effects are there for a reason, to signal that you need to sleep. I can understand if people who can't sleep and need to be alert need to use this (e.g. soldiers in combat), but it's not going to be very good for the average person who needs to do some more work. People need to sleep for various reasons (rest, various chemicals get regenerated, etc). It's not a whim of nature.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
wuld it lt me imporv my tiping and speeling after 60 ours playing mmporgs?
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
...and now they want Slashdot junkies?
Fitzghon
If I stopped reading slashdot until 12:00AM that would help with my sleep deprivation, without the use of drugs.
I have a feeling most other computer users would find the same benefits from turning off their computers at 10:00PM.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
...we'll all be working 36 hour shifts.
but People do need REM sleep on a regular basis for our conscience to rest.
Though I am sure there are many coders who would try it for a week to get that project done(aka MSFT forcing it on longhorn developers?)
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Grad students, rejoice!
...so i can make more money. ...so i can buy more cx717 ...so i can work longer. ...so i can make more money ...so i can buy more cx717 ...so i can...
Methamphetamine?
The military is going to love this.
Expect Cortex's IP to be bought the us mil any second now.
Of course the real fun will be when they discover that taking this for months and sleeping 1 hour a night, you go insane and think your a humming bee.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Watch, coffee and pop will soon have versions of with this drug and without this drug. Soon the human race will become dependant on this just as we are on caffinee.
I read somewhere that a significant biologic reason for sleep was simply that animals who laid down in a dark place for half the time had an evolutionary advantage over thos who didn't (it's about 50% harder to be eaten by a predator if 50% of your time your asleep)...
Rather than do the usual slashdot "Science is EViL" thing, why not really think about the potential here...
Yes, they will probably discover that over use of this has some serious side effect, but all that means is that it shouldn't be over used... It does not mean that we all need to run an hide...
For being a site full of geeks this place is remarkably anti science sometimes...
hard core geek-ware
Drugs like this end up messing up more than helping. A drug that can alter your normal biological functions (tiredness) and turn you more active cannot have good effects. You need sleep, simple as that. Maybe work should become more efficient instead of keeping people awake (or monkeys).
--gks
In related news, productivity at EA is up 44%.
I had a Richie Rich comic book, and his dad took a drug EXACTLY LIKE THIS. And he became EVIL. No kidding.
Richie Rich: harbinger of the future.
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Because I'm guessing if it's cheap enough they'll start feeding it to Chinese factory workers so they can increase tat output by 100%.
I was just thinking this morning as I punched in the old door combination for the hundredth time that it would be nice if that memory vanished a bit more quickly.
Your brain already does a pretty good job at figuring out what memories should be stored strongly and which ones should be left to fade away. It's almost certainly possible to override that mechanism, but you'll probably end up with incredibly vivid memories of things that aren't very relevant.
Imagine if I popped these pills before studying for organic chemistry in college. Now I'd be having flashbacks of acid/base interactions and other useless trivia while I try to go about my daily job.
Revision: "reverse [some of] the biological and behavioral effects of sleep deprivation"
This drug also increased test performance in the control group. The increase in test performance was slightly more pronounced in the sleep-deprived group.
Caffeine would likely show similar results, as would nasal decongestants and stimulant diet pills (both of which are amphetamines).
Hell, for that matter, I bet crystal meth, in low doses, would produce the same effect.
Meh, wake me up when the real fix for sleep deprivation is discovered... oh, wait...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Women everywhere moan.... as their number two excuse, right after I have a headache, becomes scientifically irrelevant....
I'm too tired honey....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
has shown that crystal meth works just as good!
Everyone, I did some digging and found that this "CX717" is simply this.
More
If this drug eliminates the desire for sleep but not a physical requirement, it provides a test for the theory. See if people fall over dead after not sleeping for a while.
I think they just invented meth.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I read the title as "Drug Reverses Effects of SHEEP Deprivation." I really need to get some sleep...
/* Insert some overused slashdot quote here */
More efficient monkeys! I took the grandkids to the zoo recently and the dang monkeys were only operating at 68% effectiveness. Stupid zoo. A little money spent on ex717 and those monkeys could easily have been an extra 15-20% more effective! Hmmmm, I imagine they'll need a bigger dose for the hippo though.
ANYTHING that tastes good, makes us feel good, makes us stronger, gives us a better memory or helps us concentrate or otherwise gives us any kind of advantage over someone not ingesting said drug is dangerous and must have hidden side effects. Some nutjobs might argue that a drug that might improve our memories dramatically and thus advance the productivity and technology of our civilization would be beneficical. However, any drug that does this is bound to be toxic, addictive, and otherwise damaging and even if it kills 1 person out of a million. Even if that one person who dies took thirty times the recommended dosage we must ban it because the only acceptable use of ingestible non-food substances should be to cure disease.
That being said, there is a horrible drug plaguing our streets known as 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine. It is lethal in doses as small as 3.2 grams. It is consumed compulsivley by a growing number of American addicts. It can cause psychomoter agitation, rambling flow of though and speech, tachycardia or cardiac arrhythmia. Large evil megacorps are trying to poison our childrens lives with them by getting them addicted to it early and it is even being distributed in schools by their dealers! Some people even say it helps them concentrate and lets them stay up longer but these benefits pale in comparison to the evils of this psychotropic drug. The Deaths piling up because of this drug should lead us to ban it immediately! We should also ban a substance often taken in conjunction with this awful drug known as DHMO.
Soon the human race will become dependant on this just as we are on caffinee.
So when do I get my sweet glowing blue eyes?
There is an extremely rare disease (less that 100 people in the world) that is hereditary that makes it impossible for someone to sleep. However, when the onset of this system appears they ALWAYS die within a few months. There is no cure and it's 100% terminal. Anyone tells you that they never sleep and keep going is full of shit.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1462046 8&query_hl=4
While they argue that this drug is different because of possibly less abuse potential (yet have no data to back that assertation up with, such as self-reinforcing studies in animals), I think the real reason is because pharmaceutical patents only last 20 years. As far as abuse potential goes, addiction is usually characterized by increased dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, of which amphetamine activates indirectly; I have seen no evidence as to whether or not CX717 will indirectly raise dopamine levels in that region of the brain as well.
They may claim they're not stimulants, but the action is that of binding to receptors and releasing a neurotransmitter called glutamate. Is that really so different than stimulants binding to a receptor and releasing norepinephrine, another neurotransmitter?
From the journal article, revealed increased activity in prefrontal cortex, dorsal striatum, and medial temporal lobe (including hippocampus) that was significantly enhanced over normal alert conditions following administration of CX717. You would see similar increases in brain activity following the administration of amphetamine as well.
Furthermore, high levels of glutamate have neurotoxic properties: In excess, glutamate causes neuronal damage and eventual cell death, particularly when NMDA receptors are activated.
Somehow though, I think the combination of a pharmaceutical company making $2.00 in profit per pill combined with possibly less of an abuse potential or political incorrectness of usage will make this drug preferred in spite of whatever risks it carries.
Of course, maybe I'm just bitter and skeptical in my old age.
I noted that the summary stated that it could restore memory loss in Alzheimer's patients.
Darn'd grandma. Her memory is improving again. Time to restore her memory loss.......
Ok, this is sort of scary....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Just in case anybody wants to know more about it, here's the Wikipedia page on that rare disease:
n ia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insom
It's an inherited 'prion' disease, the same type of disease as mad cow disease and it's relatives. Scary stuff.
I game, therefore I am...
"It's absolutely fantastic." Buzzeye says as he scrapes away the skin around his eyes with a rusty nail-puller. "I've never felt better, and my productivity is way up." When asked if there were any side-effects, Buzzeye replied "None whatsoever. Since I killed my wife and sold my children to Satan, who happens to live two doors down, things have been great. Now if I could only get the snakes to stop eating my feet, I'd be one hundred percent. Oh, could you get the door, I think it's Napoleon. He's a real bitch, and he likes to steal my aluminum brainguard."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Except that no-body holds the patent on cocaine so its illegal."
I can't believe that reasoning.
First: Asprin and Alcohol aren't patented, and aren't illegal.
Second: Lots of patented drugs are VERY illegal. (It takes a lot of money, time, red tape, and testing to get a new patented drug to the point where it is even legal to test on people.)
But then you say:
"We don't need a pill to help us work harder, we just need to adjust our expectations."
Which I totally agree with.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
...sleep deprived, drugged up monkeys running amok.
In this society, we are powerfully encouraged to discharge that energy as quickly as possible through orgasm. According to some, sexual energy, once thus spent, is collected and consumed by etheric beings who exist in a higher level of reality and keep the human race like cattle for this purpose, (among others). True or not, you don't get to use your sexual energy once it's been given up through orgasm.
On the other hand, sexual energy can also be saved up and used in other ways. People who have a lot of regular sex tend to be exhausted and dim behind the eyes because their primary source of 'income' energy is much reduced. One's level of awareness and the availability of energy are directly linked to one another.
This is not to say that having orgasms is 'bad'. Physical sex is part of why we all came to this reality. It's fun, and it can be used to link in very powerful ways to other people, as well as link to otherwise difficult to access knowledge. But for the most part, people are instructed by the media to channel away their sexual energy immediately before it can be effectively used for anything else. In the morning, people often wake up in states of heightened arousal. This has nothing to do with holding back urination as conventional medicine tells us, (you don't get a woody any other time during the day when you need to 'go'. And it happens for women as well, who don't have the same plumbing) Sexual energy is there to be used as you wish.
In any case, sleep is the way this energy finds its way into us from the Universal source. Drugs which prevent sleep are, I assume, accessing stored wells of energy, which cannot last forever. There is a reason why they say, "Speed Kills". --Of course, there are other ways in which to draw energy from the world around us other than sleep, including drawing energy from the earth through grounding meditations and exercises, (good!) Eating food and consuming life force, (standard), energetic vampirism through direct and indirect methods of torturing others, (nasty and ultimately self-destructive.). But above all of these, Sexual energy is potent and pure and freely available to anybody who can catch 40 winks.
-FL
I know. It hurts. Leave me alone until I get to the hospital.
Because if you can consciously 'snooze' nerves, you will reinjure yourself by trying to do stuff you shouldn't. (My knee hurts, so I think I'll just shut that pain down... Oops, I guess it wasn't good to try to push the accelerator normally on my way to the hospital. Is that supposed to bend that way?)
Leprosy isn't associated with immediate mortality. People die of it indirectly, though, because they don't have the nerve feedback they need to protect themselves. Your conscious snooze system would run the same risks.
Meanwhile the body does prevent you from feeling pain in some circumstances. People who break their legs can get past the point where they feel the pain any more. And the body sort of knows when that'd be best, for my money, better than I would.
If you'd like to start shutting stuff down, I suggest bowing to the hystrionic news coverage from a couple of years back and turning off your car's airbag system. Just for starters.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Actually, they DO sell meth already. It's called Desoxyn, and it's used for things like ADD, but generally only after things like Ritalin and Adderall have failed to help (enough). When taken as prescribed (and not abused in larger dosages or by people using it for other reasons), it can be very helpful for people who other things don't work for, just like Oxycontin.
There have been studies that suggest sleep is simply a method for the brain to purge itself of "weak memories"
If any medical person was to suggest that I would immediately dismiss him as a total quack. There is NO SUCH THING as an outside environmental influence that affects just one portion of the body. "Cleaning up the clutter" in your brain is only one effect of sleep. Your brain isn't a computer hard drive that needs defragging every night--it is much more complex than that and what affects the brain can affect any and all other parts of the body. There are autonomic responses that change when the brain is asleep vs. awake, changes to hormone levels, etc. that without doubt promote regeneration of the body. Sure, you can rest your skeletal muscles and let them rebuild without actually sleeping, but you cannot consciously control your heartbeat, muscles controlling your GI tract, the levels of hormones in your bloodstream and so on, so how can you expect to simulate the effects of sleep without actually sleeping?
Beyond that, even if sleep was only about the brain, can you imagine the psychological effects of an accumulation of "weak memories" or excessively prolonged conscious brain activity? At best I think you'd end up being an ADD-like basket case. At worst you could go clinically insane.
I think that should such a drug that counteracts the symptoms of sleep deprivation become widely available those who abuse it would reveal to us a whole host of side effects related to lack of sleep never before encountered. Apart from degrading mental health I think that people would physically age faster without sleep. Look at drug addicts today-sometimes they start out as "normal", smart, professional people that fro some reason get caught in an addiction. Early in the addiction they can function amazingly well with little or no sleep, but they slowly degrade as they fry their brains. While they are hooked these addicts age twice as fast as normal--even if they never end up on the street addicts in their 30s look like they are 50.
This drug is like methadone--it is cocaine or speed without the highly addictive properties and some of the other adverse side effects. I believe that further, long-term/multi-year studies would reveal that the test animals might show good performance initially, but in a few years they'd look like junkies--even if they are still more mentally alert. I forsee similar results in humans--they might be very productive and alert compard to heroin addicts, but they'll look just as old and worn out.
" it can be very helpful for people who other things don't work for"
Well that can be said about medical Marijuana. Do we have to get Merck of Phizer to want to market, and profit from it, to get the Federal government to allow it. For people wanting to expand their consciousness I image LSD is helpful. For people looking to improve their sociability Ecstasy is very helpful.
@de_machina
Modafinil (aka Provigil) is already about, tested with very few side effects, only it is restricted to use in miliraty and by prescription only.
The trick is to sell modafinil on the streets (no need to sleep for a week! w00t!), and use the surplus doctor/nurse shifts to treat those with the minor side effects. And extra police hours to tackle the odd abuser. Sorted.
If you Google this, you can read all about Peter Tripp who never quite recovered completely from his sleep-deprivation publicity stunt. Ended up divorcing his wife, losing his job, etc. etc...
Although sleep is still mostly a mystery, it is clear that it performs some sort of restorative effect. Does anyone know how this drug works and if it just blocks the symptoms of sleepiness?
Get your 8 hours a night!
I'm having a hard time believing the following can be true:
1. This doesn't get you high, even if taken at higher doses, like cough medicine.
2. It does't get you high if you combine it with other legal or prescription substances.
3. It's not addictive.
One of the above is probably false. And that's bad. I give it two weeks before the first college kid goes on a 3 day binge the weekend before midterms, and pops 5x the reccomended dosage at 6am Monday morning, with a BAC still over the legal limit where it's been since Thursday.
Granted these could be very useful and I would probably want to use them myself, but people are idiots, and this is going to harm or kill them, I guarantee it. I'm not anti-drug, I believe what you do with your own body is your own business and what I do with mine is mine (if only a single government on the planet agreed). But in the world we live in, this isn't going to fly. There'll be lawsuits all over the place.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
He's talking about not sleeping at all, or an hour or two a night. A lot of insomnia is in your head. He just might need that little something to relax and forget about not being able to sleep.
Not trying something because it's not perfect is a sure way to fail. Alcohol changes the mood, relieves tension, and can make some people very sleepy. The stimulant effect is overrated, about like eating ice cream before bed.
Self-hypnosis also can work, and as far as I know it's free of side effects.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
As a long-time sufferer of obstructive sleep apnea (got the official diagnosis today in fact, after 15 or more years suffering from it), and showing all of the symptoms of it including extreme weight gain, lack of coordination, restlessness , ittitability, fatigue, and so on, I think I speak for everyone here - I'd much rather correct the problem of sleep deprivation itself than take some drug that claims to restore my mental state (in the case of depression: Zoloft, anyone?)
The few pills I take every day are already enough - stop typing to shove MORE chemicals down my throat that only take care of the symptoms, and start fixing the problem at the source. That's where our research needs to be focused, for *any* condition that needs corrected.
If the problem is lack of sleep because of lack of time or deadlines or something, then maybe a change of career or priorities is needed. But if it's medical, then corrective *action* is needed. I had to get totally out of the working world because I couldn't handle it anymore, and it was literally killing me. Is it really so hard then, to keep your job and just adjust your lifestyle to make more time for sleep?
Karma: I don't care too much, but it's 0.0% (mostly due to lack of interest)
Talking Back to Ritalin
Ritalin-Free Kids
No More Ritalin
The Myth of the A.D.D. Child
(some of the selections from an Amazon.com search on the word "ritalin".)
In the case of ritalin and similar drugs intended to curb hyperactivity, especially in children, I would say, both anecdotally and as the result of doing a college freshman-level research paper, that while I'm very certain that it's been overprescribed and abused (I am not a doctor, but I do not think that a single half-hour session of observing a child is sufficient to label them hyperactive) that there are those cases where it is appropriate to treat hyperactivity and attention problems that don't respond to other methods.
I don't think that Ritalin is an appropriate substitute for parental and teacher time, attention, training, and exercise to run the wiggles out before sitting down to learn. If I, as an aunt, can get my six-year-old nephew to sit still and behave himself for the entirety of a three hour college lecture on a weekly basis (ten minute breaks in between sessions, during which there were bathroom visits and an opportunity to tear around like a mad thing) and the first grade teacher cannot get the same child to hold still in class, that speaks more of a too-large class size, not enough individualized attention, not enough opportunity to burn all that youthful energy on physical activity, and a behavioural problem with listening to the teacher, rather than a medical condition.
I can see using a focus-enhancing drug to prove to a kid that yes, you can too sit still and learn in class, and this is what it feels like -- and now you are going to learn to do the same thing without the pill. One of my camp buddies was on Ritalin, and he was much more focused on the drug, but much more personable and interesting to be around when unmedicated.
Similarly, I do not think that this new sleep-deprivation drug is going to in any way replace the actual sleep. It will be used and abused, and people are going to make an unholy fuss over it, but I think in the long run, people who use it wisely or people who just go with natural sleep are going to be ultimately more productive and pleasant to work with. The article does not mention side effects. There's no guarantee that people on this are going to be any more pleasant to work with while alert and sleep-deprived on this rather than on coffee. It didn't mention how much sleep someone requires after using this; it could well be something where people feel alarmingly hung-over after using unless they've gotten a solid ten to twelve hours of sleep. It doesn't mention effectiveness as a morning caffeine substitute.
The one brilliant application that does spring to mind is actually for resetting a funky biological clock: for jetlag and schedule-based insomnia. If this provides alertness without some of the harsh effects of caffeine, I would definitely apply it for myself on those days when I have to work mornings and start burning out around 3 pm. (I usually work afternoons and evenings, so my scheduled bedtime is somewhere upwards