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Sleep Is the Ultimate Brainwasher
sciencehabit writes "Every night since humans first evolved, we have made what might be considered a baffling, dangerous mistake. Despite the once-prevalent threat of being eaten by predators, and the loss of valuable time for gathering food, accumulating wealth, or having sex, we go to sleep. Scientists have long speculated and argued about why we devote roughly a third of our lives to sleep, but with little concrete data to support any particular theory. Now, new evidence (abstract, full text paywalled) has refreshed a long-held hypothesis: During sleep, the brain cleans itself."
During sleep, the Cerebrospinal fluid fills channels in the brain, collecting waste products. It uses a lot of energy, leading to the hypothesis that the brain can't clean up waste while also processing sensory input.
I wonder how well this accounts for the extremely variable sleeping periods of various animals? See http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chasleep.html .
So what happens when you don't sleep much? (currently running on 2.5 hours)
I used to imagine it as the brain defragmenting itself. Imagine that! A computer guy seeing biological topics through a computer-geek lens!
Humans suffer from major memory leaks and must be shut down periodically due to poor garbage collection.
"During sleep, the Cerebrospinal fluid fills channels in the brain"
So the "wet dream" is all in your head.......
...with a better word than "brainwashing?" Since that already means something that does not match the contents of the article.
So that's where Bill Gates got the idea about having to reboot Windows every day back when. It's really a form of cleaning the computer. It's good for the system, don't ya know.
This is why our sensory inputs (sight, hearing in particular) are mostly cut off during this time. If not periodically cut off, the "noise" starts erasing more permanent memories, causing hallaucinations, etc. (Look up effects of sleep deprivation.) It's a cybernetic quandary; the only way the brain can protect itself from erasure is to periodically stop all inputs.
It's a cybernetic quandary; the only way the brain can protect itself from erasure is to periodically stop all inputs.
Sounds like a hard drive I had once...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Gives to time to better process and analyse the data that you collected during the day. Most of what you learn, you learn in your sleep, while unconscionably looking over the stuff that you just did not get while awake, distracted by all the other input going on.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
A higher order species that has brains that can "cleans" itself without requiring sleep would have so much evolutionary advantage that they would rapidly take over the entire planet (sort of like flowering plants). Why hasn't 3+ billion years of evolutionary produced such a species?
If you can learn to compose well-written proposals and stay relatively positive, you can always do contracting (assuming you have skills that are in demand). Take a look at Guru.com. You'll be bidding against third world countries, but you wouldn't want the sort of employer that would hire them anyway, and there are ones looking for quality over cost.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Mid-day sweeping keeps the cobwebs out.
Remember how Defrag in Windows 98 used to move the little colored blocks around? One night I got more or less the same thing. When I was about 11, several years before Windows 95 existed, I dreamed I walked into an M/E Root Beer restaurant (apparently a fictional counterpart of A&W restaurants) and in the back room, an anthropomorphic rabbit was sorting a bunch of pieces of paper with pictures on them into various piles. I looked at a few of them, and they appeared to be my memories.
I mean, even a short nap instantly improves how you feel, anywhere from 5-15 minutes.
Not everyone responds well to short naps. I don't. I know I'm no alone. ...not simply trying to be contrary, just saying that short naps aren't for everyone.
A lot(tm).
There's a fantastic return on that, since it effectively increases my lifespan by 30%.
I'm still convinced that dreams are artifacts of calibration routines, and only race conditions allow you to remember them.
And wish to engage in brainwashing of your own, how should sleep deprivation feature in your... um... "protocol"?
What does this imply for the idiots who figure they can just replace most or all of their sleep with Modafinil? I'm guessing there are going to be a few sad stories in the future.
and all this time i thought the blood cells took waste away from the brain cells to the kidneys. I learned something new today. thanks for posting
There's also lymph - the forgotten circulatory system.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You're doing it wrong. As Bowie put it "Don't forget to turn on the light Don't laugh Babe, it'll be alright"
Scishow video about Sleep
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwNMvUXTgDY
Quick! Throw it in the freezer!
I've run into a few people who always brag about only needing a few hours sleep every night.
I've always sort of thought they were full of waste products.
You're possibly setting yourself up for Alzheimer's. It's been known for a long time that buildup of amyloid plaques is worsened by lack of sleep and vice versa. (Sleep issues show up long before other symptoms of Alzheimer's). This provide a mechanism by showing how the plaques are regularly removed by good sleep.
For extra fun, sleep is also when myelin-repairing oligodendrocytes kick into gear. You probably won't develop MS from not sleeping, but it isn't good for your long-term health, as that function is necessary to the survival of brain cells. This impacts mood, memory, and moral judgement.
Oh, and then there's the fact that lack of sleep disrupts the ratio of leptin and ghrelin in your body, making you far hungrier when awake. This is part of the reason that lack of sleep is correlated with obesity. You also have lower testosterone (impacting your virility) & higher cortisol levels (wrecking your memory and weakening your immune system). Other hormone changes put you at higher risks of type 2 diabetes.
In short, you're killing yourself. Seek help if this isn't voluntary. Prioritize getting more sleep.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
How to explain those folks?
(Google it yourself)
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Sure. garbage collection. all good RTEs do it. makes a ton of sense to do it when the body can afford to spare the energy. do Vulcans sleep?
In our evolutionary past, we had to specialize in order to be competitive in a particular niche. That specialization prevented our earliest forbears from being competitive in the radically changed environments of both day and night. So all the way back in the evolutionary tree to bacteria, we see a circadian rhythm. Some creatures are better adapted to night, others to day. They spend their off-cycle conserving energy and being difficult to spot. Holding still accomplishes both. So sleeping became a strong selective advantage. Since sleep is built in at a fundamental level, any later specializations have to be compatible. So brainwashing while we're asleep is a compatible and advantageous adaptation.
When tired, sleep.
When hungry, eat.
When thirsty, drink.
When in pain, don't mask the pain - find the cause.
Our bodies are self-sustaining machines based on multi-million-year-old designs that have been specifically chosen for their ability to detect, avoid and cope with dangers.
We're not perfect but, pretty much, the body knows exactly what it needs at any given time (there are instances where, if you ignore the warning signs, fight through, and you're close to destruction, the body will "flip" and want you to do stupid things - hypothermia is a good example here - but they are the exception rather than the rule). If you want an extreme example, watch pregnancy "cravings" - the body knows it needs some crap it's never needed in such proportions before, detects it in food (or other materials), and MAKES you want to eat it.
Telling people they need to sleep X amount of times or for X hours or whatever is just as ridiculous as spouting that we "need" 3 square meals a day (look into the history of that - it's a modern invention). Ancient documents almost all refer to "the second sleep" (i.e. people waking up in the middle of the night, even when artificial illumination was sparse and expensive, and doing things, then going back to bed) but that doesn't mean we should force our bodies to do what they don't want to do.
What we've done is taught ourselves to fight our bodies. We "need" to stay awake to go to work and perform against a rigorous and inflexible timetable set down by tradition. When we can't sleep, we force ourselves to try and frustrate our bodies and others rather than just getting up and doing what needs to be done. We've taught ourselves to wait until lunch/dinnertime to eat for fear of being "odd", and to then have a certain size meal (and then pig out on high-energy snacks in the meantime to fulfill our rumbling bellies).
We have conditioned our children to "stop running" (pretty much our primary genetic body advantage, that we have abandoned in modern life) and adults spend their lives walking and then have to perform an organised exercise to give that kind of boost to our bodies (and do you not feel good AFTER such an exertion because your body was craving it?) and we've taught ourselves to mask pain and discomfort wherever it strikes.
Not saying that we shouldn't do some things (i.e. basic hygiene and toilet-training, etc.) but we don't listen to our bodies any more.
When you hurt your ankle, keep your weight off it. Why? Because it hurts. If that starts to make your hips hurt, take it easy rather than forcing your body into pain. Don't tank up on painkillers "because you need to go to work/school" and make yourself walk on it. It hurts for a damn good reason, and we can't turn off pain for a damn good reason (admittedly, sometimes that goes wrong, but we know about those conditions and can detect and treat them as best we can).
There is no "rule" to keeping a human alive except "give it what it craves". You can go too far in the modern world (e.g. obesity, overindulgence, addiction, etc.) but that's also why we have a brain. To say "Hold on, this is wrong."
It's "wrong" to tell anyone how much sleep they "should be getting" (some people do only need 3 hours, others 12 or more, and it's not for anyone to force them otherwise), the same way that there is crap that my nation's health departments push such as "5 fruit/vegetables a day" (the recommendation is different in every country), "X glasses of water a day" (unnecessary - drink when thirsty unless you suffer from a very rare condition), etc. are there to encourage people not to over-indulge, not because it's a minimum requirement to sustain life. The whole vitamin / supplement industry is also preying on this social factor too (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24563590).
Do what your body asks of you.
I've been experimenting with Sleep as Android which uses your phone's accelerometer to measure your physical movements and thus your mental state during sleep, When it detects REM sleep it plays an audio loop "you are dreaming". Not managed to do anything exciting in my dreams yet but looks promising to me.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Yeah, posted almost immediately before this story, no less.
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"
I just heard back from Golden Bow. Vopt first appeared in January, 1986.
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