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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 .
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.
...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.
Many neurological diseases—from Alzheimer's disease to stroke and dementia—are associated with sleep disturbances, Nedergaard notes. The study suggests that lack of sleep could have a causal role, by allowing the byproducts to build up and cause brain damage. "This could open a lot of debate for shift workers, who work during the nighttime,” Nedergaard predicts. "You probably develop damage if you don’t get your sleep."
Beta amyloids are specifically mentioned, those make up the plaques that are found in Alzheimers.
Worth pointing out that the effects of sleep deprivation are well known, this is simply trying to explain HOW those symptoms occur.
Apparently, brain poop which may lead to many brain farts.
I went almost a week without sleep and it definitely screws you up. On day 5, I was hallucinating that there were people around me and seeing things out of the corner of my eye. I had a constant fuzzy feeling and had very little energy. It was an interesting experiment and it was not easy to get to sleep. It took me over a month to get back into a proper rhythm.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
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?
Mid-day sweeping keeps the cobwebs out.
I agree that it doesn't seem like night or day would matter much.
The second point, you're responding to a new hypothesis put forth by the researcher based on the current findings. The current findings are only that it's cleared out during sleep, not saying that low neural activity is the reason. That part is just speculation. I'd suggest it's probably more complex, that the glial cleaning activity causes abnormal neuronal activity when it's in that mode. Perhaps the reason it happens during sleep is because if it happened while you were awake, you'd hallucinate, act even more irrationally and irregularly etc. Perhaps that's part of the reason that dreams are so bizarre. Pure speculation.
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'm still convinced that dreams are artifacts of calibration routines, and only race conditions allow you to remember them.
Not that I remember. It was rough for the first two days but by day 3 I just didn't feel like sleeping anymore. I watched TV or played games all night until people were alive again and continued on with my day. I was exhausted though both mentally and physically somehow. The day after I finally slept was probably the worst. Still no energy but now coupled with nausea and no appetite. It was like a withdrawal of some sort... not recommended :P
I already kick into REM sleep really fast as it is so when I was not sleeping, I would sort of dream while being awake. It's a crazy experience for sure.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
5 days? that's nothing, 11 days was my record, granted numerous quantities of drugs were involved. By that time I was quite psychotic though and a good friend firmly suggested I sleep with a very well placed punch.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
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").
I'm hoping someone comes up with a power flush technique like with oil or transmission oil changes at Jiffy Lube. Step into a booth, plug in, five minutes later you're good to go another twenty four hours... or twenty three hours and fifty five minutes.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.