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The Brain's Secret For Sleeping Like a Log
An anonymous reader writes "Why can some people sleep through anything? According to this article in Wired Science, some lucky people have an extra helping of a certain kind of brain static that essentially blocks out noise and other stimuli. These 'sleep spindles' can be detected via EEG, and show up as brief bursts of high-frequency brain waves; some people naturally produce more than others. The researchers say these spindles are produced by the thalamus, the brain region that acts as a waystation for sensory information. If the thalamus is busy producing sleep spindles, sensory information can't make it through the thalamus to the cortex, the perceptive part of the brain."
Yet, this doesn't explain why I can't sleep at 11:30pm when the house is dead quiet. {sigh}
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
being back in a large lecture hall, chin cupped in hand while the distant professor pauses his thickly accented monologue to scrawl something illegible on the blackboard. While a spectacular fall day beckons outside the windows.
Wait... What? People sleep? Solidly? Damn, I need some of that.
Wouldn't being a sound sleeper be a liability in the Darwin game? I would think that waking up when there's unusual stimuli would be something helpful to keep from being lunch for a nocturnal predator.
A cat can sack out on a Ferrari engine running wide open just because it's warm and not wake up until they are in the next state.
I'm one of those log-sleepers. In college I slept through fire alarms regularly despite the fact that one of the sounders was located in front of my door. I have never been able to use an alarm clock to wake up reliably, despite locating the clockS across the room so I would have to get up to turn them off - if they bothered me enough to turn them off, I would actually get out of bed, actually switch them off, and go back to sleep - all without remembering. The second night the baby was home, sleeping in a bassinet next to my bed (six feet away), my wife was pissed at me the whole next day until I finally asked her what was wrong; apparently the baby started screaming, I sat up in bed, pointed at the baby, asked my wife "Why don't you do something about that kid screaming?", laid back down and went back to sleep - I remember none of this. I can sleep with the lights on or off, although the only thing that actually does wake me is bright light when I've been conditioned to have none.
On the face of it it is far more of a curse than a blessing. Sleep is a black hole out of my life from which nothing wakes me (I have woken in the morning on the floor after my wife tried to push me out of bed to get me to take care of the baby back before she realized it wasn't going to happen). I generally don't even remember my dreams although I know I have them. As a result I so dislike sleep that I put it off as long as possible and have a light shining in my eye to wake me up in the morning.
On the upside, as the article says, people with this deep sleeping capability (perhaps such as I have) tend to have good memories and above average IQ. So maybe there's a good part to this. But I wish there were room for balance.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
Exactly. That's why I stick my niece with a knife ever so often to make sure she's impervious to sharp metal objects when she grew up.
Dude, I totally agree. After a good nights rest,
I always wake up with a "sleep spindle".
(He-he... he-he... he said "sleep spindle".)
[quote]
some lucky people have an extra helping of a certain kind of brain static that essentially blocks out noise and other stimuli
[/quote]
Time now to invent an implanted device which generates such static... perfect for when the mother-in-law is visiting.
I'm a log time sleeping log, accustomed to 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep without any special effort. I've slept through a fire alarm in the dorm in college (completely sober), and the alarm was immediately outside my door (12 feet from me). At least as a light sleeper had it actually been a fire, you'd be alive and I'd be sleeping through burning.
-- What did Spock find in Kirk's toilet? The captain's log.
Works every time
You're not too far off center here. The brain is remarkably adaptable in this sense. It has been my experience that if I go to sleep in a slightly noisy area (nap in my car in the parking lot, for example) then I'm quite hard to wake up. If I fall asleep in total silence, I'm easy to wake up.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
My memories of going to sleep as a child are of tossing and turning every night in bed.
My parents bought my brother a waterbed when he outgrew his twin bed. I thought I'd fall asleep quicker in a waterbed than my old mattress, so I pestered my parents endlessly until they relented and bought me a waterbed too. It didn't help.
I learned about self-hypnosis, lucid dreaming, and "mental imagery" when I was 17 years old. One style of self-hypnosis calls for relaxing the physical body, then relaxing the mind. I was fascinated by the prospects of "internal senses".
I tried to relax in chairs and on the bed (such as for a "nap") as best I could, but the only relaxation I experienced was fleeting. I'd feel good for a half a second, then I'd notice feeling good and I'd pop out of the relaxation and be stuck in my overly tense body once again.
Some of the web pages on dreaming (1999 or so) and books that I read talked about a "drifty-dreamy" hypnagogic state between sleep and wakefulness. I tried to relax as best I could in bed. I always passed out before I noticed anything.
I left for college the next year, and developed something like lupus (lots of inflammation). I thought I had an RSI, but the P.A. and M.D. at the campus health center said there was nothing wrong with me that a little exercise wouldn't fix. I didn't believe them, so I started my own search for answers.
Many years passed, and I eventually I ended up in the hands of a capable Osteopath who specialized in hands-on therapy. I told him my story: head trauma when I was 17 y.o., swelling and pain in forearms, etc. He did his thing, and over a course of about a year he gradually helped my body's structures move back into their proper place.
Other disciplines look at a bone that's out of place as if it's a problem. One maxim from early Osteopathy was that "muscles move bones, and nerves control muscles". So rather than directly popping a bone back into place, a skilled osteopath will evaluate a patient to see what causes a structure to be malpositioned.
The good doctor likened a case such as mine to peeling an onion: stored trauma comes off a layer at a time.
One night after a few months of regular treatments, I opened my mouth to brush my teeth and noticed that the constant clicking noise in my jaw (TMJ) was no longer present. I opened and closed my mouth a few times in disbelief. The clicking had been with me for about four years at that point...
I also noticed that I no longer had to "try" to relax in bed before I passed out - most nights I quickly fell asleep.
Good sleep comes from having a balanced body, and hands-on therapies are one way to restore balance. There are others that I've found useful, but that's a much longer post.
Attention Insomniacs: Watch for my replies in this thread & story - I'll try to get some more information online shortly. I just want to get this comment posted while the story is still fresh. :)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Hm, thiscould perhaps explain things; considering how, for a long time, I slept essentially in a hallway. Not really that great though - alarm clocks hardly ever work and naps in random places can get nervous.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Sleep... Data...
Hm. I have something like this: If I am persistently disturbed while I am trying to sleep (for example, by construction noise or loud music nearby), I will often fall into a super-deep sleep that lasts a minimum of 3 or 4 hours.
So the noise will wake me up a few times, but then my brain seems to switch off outside stimuli and go into hibernation.
This plus snooze-alarm is a very bad combination.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
... if you find yourself, say, in a post-Apocalyptic predicament and need to return to hunting and gathering and living less protected. Being able to wake up when something goes bump in the night could be the difference between seeing another sunrise or not.
Every 7-8 months or so, I experience a dream that seems to last 3 or 4 hours, and seems like it was written like a well-made movie. I wake up out of it, thinking a long time has passed, and it's only 3-4 hours elapsed. Other, ordinary dreams seem dull in comparison and run me through the whole night.
Is there a name for said type of dream?
I can sleep through almost any sound, but the slightest bit of light wakes me right up(which is why I usually end up getting up at sunrise). I wonder if the parts of the brain that wake people up when they hear sounds are responsible for waking them up in response to increases in light.
Monstar L
When you get an itch, thing about something else, when you feel like tossing and turning think about something you did during the day. Oh and get lots of excercise but not within 2 hours of when you want to sleep, if none of these things work. See a professional.
I live in a big city apartment in the downtown core. I can generally sleep through anything. The thing I notice though is that human voices will always wake me up.
I don't live far away from the fire department, so I'm quite sure that sirens are going off at all hours of the night but I never hear them while I'm sleeping. I find that even though its much quieter, people talking, screaming or even faint whispering (like my alarm radio starting to turn on) is enough to wake me up.
I noticed this after the last few nights where its been relatively silent and then at 2 or 3 in the morning I'll hear my neighbors talking or listening to their TV. I usually wake up in the middle of the night, so its possible they were also talking for a while and I didn't hear it.
Just a thought for other insomniacs, light sleepers who can't get anything done:
I have a diagnosed sleep disorder and take medication for it. I've always been a light sleeper and for a while I considered myself an insomniac. In the last few weeks of trying different things (after years! of failed attempts), I'm finding that if I force myself to go to sleep 2 hours earlier and wake up 2 hours earlier (effectively instead of waking up for 7 am, I wake up at 5 am, I have a better day. I have more time in the morning to do other tasks or workout and I feel more productive during the day. I find reading something really boring for 15 minutes helps me sleep too.
So there's a real, scientific reason why I sleep through things like...
Hurricanes; tornadoes; multiple 747's, 777's, and other misc. big aircraft coming in to land right over me; gunfire; noon sun shining on my face...
Now if only they could find why I'm almost hyper at 3am, and that I like it.
Clown will eat me.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sleep spindles? How about sleep folds and sleep mutilations?
> uncholowapo (1666661)
I've seen some good UID #'s, but ... wow. How did you get it?
And doesn't your palindromic UID make up for the insomnia somehow?
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
This is an interesting study, but the conclusion it appears to draw is erroneous at best.
Take this quote, from one of the study's investigators: "During sleep, our neurons are busy doing very complicated processing, including, this study shows, generating sleep spindles to protect us from being awoken from noises in the environment."
EEG is such a broad average that it tells us very little about what the brain is doing, just like looking at the NASDAQ doesn't tell you very much about how one company or a group of companies are doing. To suggest that our brain is "generating sleep spindles" is myopic; sleep spindles are a symptom of what the brain is doing during sleep: replaying memories temporarily held in the hippocampus and consolidating then into cortex.
The correlation between producing lots of "sleep spindles" and having relatively good memory makes sense in this light, as does being hard to wake up during sleep, as a brain that's attending to memory consolidation won't be as sensitive to external stimuli (just like when you're concentrating while conscious). But to suggest that sleep spindles function to protect us from noises in the environment makes no sense at all. Evolutionarily, it's more advantageous to wake up when you are being attacked, or are otherwise in peril. If anything, this research would suggest some kind of limiting factor to the overall intelligence of a society that deals with the environment in that way.
A perfect Brain DoS. Keep the thalamus busy and you sleep like a baby.
If I'd invested all my money into various online "marketing" / get-rich-quick schemes, and was constantly worried I was never going to see it again, I don't think I could sleep either.
I don't know if you can call this lucky. I came to the office late because of my brain's high spindle rate. :)
All my life I've gone to sleep around 2 o'clock at night. As a kid, I'd lie restless in bed for about three hours every night.
Then I worked out a mental... imagery thing. That helped alot. In retrospect, it was a form of meditation.
Later I studied kung-fu, and an important part of that is (Buddhist style) mediation. I've always had a "chattery brain", but for months I practiced as best I could before I got anywhere. I'd force myself to sit at least 20-40 minutes every night before going to bed.
After a couple of years I'd reached the point where I could do a 5-10 minute meditation to make me sleepy (after which I fall asleep within 2-5 minutes),
or a 10-15 minute meditation to increase my enegy levels. (Really handy when going to party and feeling tired. After a short meditation, I could be bouncing and ready to go.)
That was 15 years ago. I still sit down briefly before going to bed (now more a body habit than actual mediation). I'm usually alseep within 5 minutes.
And I always sleep deeper after I've meditated.
If I meditate, I seldom dream.
If I don't meditate... lighter sleep, less restful, with dreams.
some people are best served by the pharmaceutical industry. Good luck with that.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Had? You probably still have them. Most adults do anyways.
Do. Or do not. There is no try.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
"I would really like to know how to produce these "sleep spindles"." ((( Psst! Hey bud, sleep spindles here. $10 each, three for $25. )))
Mod Me Up. You'll make a grown man cry.
My dad has harnessed this power and uses it consciously when somebody tries to talk to him.
It's sort of spam filter.
Now semiseriously this might help you sleep but wouldn't it also make you more vulnerable and exposed when sleeping. Noise can be an indicator of danger. Evolutionary wouldn't the early human actually benefit from light sleep? Or to put it into modern context wouldn't you like to be woken up if someone is breaking into your house? What I am saying is that I am not sure I would call these people 'lucky'.
I've been playing around with an F/OSS binaural beat generator called Gnuaural. Interestingly, some of the "schedules" (frequency vs time) for meditative purposes include periodic bursts of higher-frequency beats (about once every 8-10 minutes) to keep from falling into a sound sleep. I noticed in the article that these "spindles" occur on the order of seconds rather than minutes. It would be interesting to modify a Gnuaural schedule to make the high-frequency bursts occur more often in order to achieve a "deeper" sleep for light sleepers.
Did anyone else notice that the EEG machine used to measure the ability to ignore noises was muted?
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Do. Or do not. There is no try.
On behalf of everyone here at Slashdot, I would like to personally thank you for putting Yoda and masturbation into one line of text.
:-(
This awful image in my head.. MAKE IT STOP!
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
...opiates. I suffer from chronic insomnia and out of everything I have tried taking including diphenhydramine (benadryl), Ambien, Lunesta, and melatonin, the best and most consistently effective medication has been...hydrocodone, vicodin. I have periods were I can sleep through loud sounds, and periods when the slightest noise wakes me up. I have times when no matter how much I sleep I feel groggy and tired in the morning and periods when just a few hours leaves me rested and alert. The only thing consistent is that a single vicodin let's me sleep undisturbed for 7-8 hours and I feel completely relaxed and rested in the morning. I wish I could explain that to my doctor and not be instantly written off as a drug seeker. People with no addictive behavior (I'd say no capacity for addiction at all) suffer because the vast majority of humanity can't be responsible with pharmaceuticals.
I'd welcome any advance in science which could provide the same benefit without the obvious downsides of regular opiate use, but I think the problem is actually rather simple and was solved thousands of years ago when man discovered that the poppy plant, when prepared correctly relieved all forms of suffering - although not without great cost. A close second to opiates is Lunesta, but my doctor acts like that's just as bad as taking heroin if I use it for more than a few days. So no luck there.
I guess I just need more "spindles"
Sure, but humans haven't had to worry about natural predators for something like 10,000 years or more.
More like 6 million years. The life expectancy of Homo sapiens in the hunter gatherer groups was 28 years including infant mortality and around 50 after infancy. Such long life expectancy is not the norm for prey animals. They get killed and eaten for no fault of their own and selection prefers fast mature-reproduce cycle. Even the predator animals following an accident prone life style of chase and hunt have lower life spans.
Further by the time the hunter-gatherers were studied scientifically all the prime productive fecund lands have been taken by the sedentary agriculturalists. So before the domestication of plants (aka invention of agriculture) they would have had even longer life spans. So clearly there are/were predators that could kill us easily, but we were not part of their normal diet for several million years. chimps, gorillas, organgutans all have long life spans and are not hunted routinely by predators.
Dogs have been bred for every damn function and form, but we have not been able to breed them for longer life spans. The fundamental metabolism of an animal is very difficult to change. The mere fact that we can live for 80, 90 or even 100 years shows we have not been food for millions of years.
Deep sleep would have become a selection advantage after the domestication of dogs. Estimated to have taken place between 25,000 years ago and 15,000 years ago in central Asia.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I found that when my baby < 1 year old is in the same bed I wake at the slightest movement/sound, otherwise I sleep very soundly.
I'm either worried I'd smother him, or some other protective instinct overrides this function.
I doubt I could calculate the square root of a two-digit prime in my head up to 5 decimal places when completely sober :/
It's not that I couldn't calculate a square root (give me a pen and some paper and I'll manage), it's just that I can't keep so many numbers in my head...
I've done the same thing, I actually had to double-check the username to make sure I didn't post that and just forget that I had...
Can this happen while you're awake? It might explain why teens don't pay attention in class or why wives won't fetch beer.
Lots of it.
The way I do it is by successive approximation. It's not the best or fastest way, and not the way you'd do it on paper. However, in your head it's quite doable.
Say you are trying to find the root of 29. Guesstimate the root: it's between 5 and 6, and probably more to the five side. So, first approximation is 5.5 and now we check that by squaring it. Multiply 5.5 by 5.5 gives 30.25, which is on the high side. Try 5.4, which gives 29.16.
That's close enough to expand a decimal. Next approximation is 5.38 (because we're quite close on the previous pass). Multiplying 5.38 by 5.38 gives 28.9444. Close enough for another decimal, so next try is 5.385....
It really helps to know the product rules:
(x+a)(x-a) = x^2 - a^2 , which is convenient for things like:
53 * 47 = (50 + 3)(50 - 2) = 2500 - 9 = 2491
and
(x+a)(x+a) = x^2 + 2xa + a^2, which makes things like:
113^2 = (100 + 13) ^ 2 = 100^2 + 2600 + 13^2 = 10000 + 2600 + 169 = 12769
I assume you memorized all squares upto (at least) 25 in elementary school.
Anyway, this post proves my point rather well, as I'm "drunk" enough to not be able to have a conversation, but I'm quite sure my math above is correct, barring typo's.
Still... you are suggesting that I multiply 6-digit numbers in my head. Or multiply one by itself, anyway. By the time I get to the end of the multiplication I’ll have forgotten the beginning of it.
Perhaps you meant manually, not mentally... i.e. on paper, without a calculator.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Don't oversleep. If you go to sleep when you're too tired to stay up, you'll fall asleep no trouble.
If you insist on pissing away your time on more sleep than is good for you, at least rise and lie at regular times; that'll help you both fall asleep and wake up quickly.
You can multiply 6-digit numbers in your head with no problem?
Frankly I’m sure that I could do that too if I spent forever practicing. However, it isn’t worth my time.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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