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We Transition Between 19 Different Brain Phases When Sleeping, Study Finds (newatlas.com)
A new study suggests that instead of the traditional four sleep stages we generally understand the brain moves through, there are in fact at least 19 different identifiable brain patterns transitioned through while sleeping. New Atlas reports: Traditionally scientists have identified four distinct stages our brain transitions through in a general sleep cycle -- three non-REM sleep phases (N1-3) that culminate in an REM phase. The four stages have been classically determined and delineated using electroencephalographic (EEG) brainwave recordings. The new research set out to more comprehensively record whole-brain activity in a number of subjects by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study began by studying 57 healthy subjects in an fMRI scanner. Each subject was asked to lie in the scanner for 52 minutes with their eyes closed. At the same time, each subject was tracked using an EEG. This allowed the researchers to compare traditional brainwave sleep cycle data with that from the fMRI.
Due to the limited duration of the fMRI data, no subjects were found to enter REM sleep, however, 18 subjects did completely transition from wakefulness through the three non-REM sleep phases according to the EEG data. Highlighting the complexity of brain activity during our wake-to-sleep cycle the researchers confidently chronicled 19 different recurring whole-brain network states. Mapping these whole-brain states onto traditional EEG-tracked sleep phases revealed a number of compelling correlations. Wakefulness, N2 sleep and N3 sleep all could be represented by specific whole brain states. The range of different fMRI-tracked brain states did reduce as subjects fell into deeper sleep phases, with two different fMRI brain states correlating with N2 sleep, and only one with N3. However, N1 sleep as identified by EEG data, the earliest and least clearly defined sleep phase, did not consistently correspond with any fMRI brain state. The researchers conclude from this data that N1 is actually a much more complex sleep phase than previously understood. This phase, a strange mix of wakefulness and sleep, seemed to encompass a large range of the 19 different whole-brain network states identified in the fMRI data. The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Due to the limited duration of the fMRI data, no subjects were found to enter REM sleep, however, 18 subjects did completely transition from wakefulness through the three non-REM sleep phases according to the EEG data. Highlighting the complexity of brain activity during our wake-to-sleep cycle the researchers confidently chronicled 19 different recurring whole-brain network states. Mapping these whole-brain states onto traditional EEG-tracked sleep phases revealed a number of compelling correlations. Wakefulness, N2 sleep and N3 sleep all could be represented by specific whole brain states. The range of different fMRI-tracked brain states did reduce as subjects fell into deeper sleep phases, with two different fMRI brain states correlating with N2 sleep, and only one with N3. However, N1 sleep as identified by EEG data, the earliest and least clearly defined sleep phase, did not consistently correspond with any fMRI brain state. The researchers conclude from this data that N1 is actually a much more complex sleep phase than previously understood. This phase, a strange mix of wakefulness and sleep, seemed to encompass a large range of the 19 different whole-brain network states identified in the fMRI data. The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.
If the subjects never even entered REM sleep then I would call this study useless. If you're going to knowingly omit known parts of sleep and still claim huge amounts of sleeping types you may as well go all the way and make sure REM is included in the study also.
Now when I lay in bed awake at night, I can fret in so much more precise detail about what my body isn't doing...
waste of space article.
Just another day in Paradise
freaks
Surely I will not be speculating on which stage of sleep I am in while I am actually sleeping.
For some reason the usual sluggishness I experience after my melatonin therapy sometimes boils over into something bordering on narcolepsy.
Normally we talk about "falling" asleep. These nearly obligatory naps would be better described as unconsciousness welling up from below. It's almost as if my brain is busy going to sleep, without noticing the lights are still on, upstairs. Then when I finally lie down, I fall into a sleep that is entirely bereft of the "rested" feeling one normally experiences on waking up again. Sometimes I feel refreshed on some level, but never the actual rested feeling.
I keep mental sleep notes at all time as part of managing my condition.
I've long known that I have any number of semi-waking states, with varying degrees of awareness of my surroundings. I had a weird one recently where I lost all conception of time, but some other things were still held in consciousness. I couldn't, for a while, have told you if I had been (partly) asleep for ten minutes or two hours.
Rarely I experience a condition where both the waking and dreaming worlds are available to semi-consciousness at the same time. Sometimes one even tries to comment on the other, but this never goes well.
The only thing I've read about this in the literature is an observation that partial microsleeps have been observed in brains that are sleep deprived (or merely just sleep phase deprived of one normal phase). People with disrupted sleep architectures (like I sometimes experience) can feel like you're sleeping eight hours per night, but still wind up with peculiar sleep debts.
I tried modafinil for a year at one point, mostly on low dosages. I was somewhat enjoyable at first, but I quickly acclimated, and the enjoyable part of the buzz became very minor. It always inhibited my ability to add a pair of two-digit numbers in my head. Usually I just know the rough magnitude of the result automatically; this signal vanished. Without this signal, it was almost as if I didn't know where to start the addition process. Trying to deal with numbers on modafinil just made me feel stoned, but I didn't feel stoned otherwise. Combining with caffeine (5-ounce doses of coffee) intensified many of the effects (until my responsiveness to that wore off, too).
The problem with modafinil is that it masks the difficulty of coping with tiredness, but does not ultimately compensate for the deficit. And it tended to shorten my sleep at night by about an hour, if I took a small dose in the morning, which for me proved counterproductive. I did manage to get something working a bit where I took modafinil one morning, then nortriptyline the next evening, and alternated like that. NT deepens sleep (at least it does for me), especially toward the end of my sleep interval. I didn't like the carry-over, so I eventually had 4 mg pills custom compounded, and these still help my sleep enough, with hardly any lingering fatigue the next morning. (NT is one of two metabolites from amitriptyline, which is commonly used to treat symptoms associated with fibromyalgia, which could well prove to be sleep related at the end of the day; I figure one metabolite is better than two, and I discovered that NT does the trick for me just fine.) With the alternation program, I get one short night, followed by one longer night. On the modafinil day, I have fewer problems with fatigue from the melatonin therapy. But there were other problems, and it shuts down part of my math ability.
Anyway, in mucking around with all of this, I got myself into some pretty weird states. At one point, I was having full blown hypnagogic hallucinations while 100% awake. This was when I tried to use modafinil to stay on day mode when my body had decided I should be on night mode. I was getting enough sleep, measured by hours unconscious, but it clearly wasn't fully restorative sleep. It only took about a week of this protocol for the hypnagogic hallucinations to gain a serious toe hold within my waking cognition. It only took one glorious s
TFA says "no subjects were found to enter REM sleep". This is not a surprise given the insane noise produced by MRI scanners.
Am I allowed to choose which one I self-indentify as?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... and across 26 different dimensions, to be sure.
My interpretation is that there are at least 19 different way to fall asleep... i.e. transition between wakefulness and N2...
Message received. The crow flies at midnight. I repeat: The crow flies at midnight.
(I'm pretty sure parent is either off his meds, or he's sending a message to his handler.)
Melatonin makes me fall asleep but then I just wake up 2 hours later.
Man wtf u takin midofinil for? Thatâ(TM)s dirty. Get Nuvigil bro, itâ(TM)s more pure.
If you ever have to be inside of one of those machines, you'll instantly see, why this couldn't be further from a place where you could fall asleep or have any normal sleep whatsoever.
I would not be surprised one bit, if the entirety of their new results stem directly from people being massively uncomfortable from being in there. Even those that managed to fall asleep. (Who may just all have been too tired because of existing sleep abnormalities.)
.... very likely already had a common statistical abnormality in their sleep, like not having slept enough last night, or other existing sleep problems.
And it's not only the noise. It's an uncomfortably cramped space; you aren't allowed to move (usually); you are probably connected to wires; you will definitely not be lying on anything resembling a comfortable bed ...
IMHO, if you can fall asleep in a freaking MRI, then that is a great indicator already, that something is wrong with your sleep.
Those people could probable fall asleep, rolled in a carpet, in the middle of a mosh pit only 26 miles front of a Disaster Area concert.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You guys have it easy.
We Aspies have to go through 91 different brain phases or we don't sleep.
Closing your eyes isn't the same as being asleep.
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While reading the description it came to mind the complex procedure for putting a Postal Service FSS machine into a "zero energy state" in order that preventive maintenance could be safely done. These huge machines have high voltage and current, computers, networks, pneumatics and dangerous mechanical actions that must be neutralized. There is a complex procedure for doing this correctly. There is also a complex procedure for bringing the machine back up again and testing its functionality. I wonder if the brain isn't doing essentially the same thing - carefully shutting down the various parts of the brain and brain functions, then doing maintenance and finally powering back up in proper sequence..
E Proelio Veritas.
Interesting stuff.
I have the opposite problem: gastrically-mediated, chronic, severe sleep deprivation. It's a rare night that I get more than 3 hours of deep sleep, and I spend most of my horizontal hours in some variation of twilight sleep - which, as you noted in your own case, isn't particularly restful.
About 5 years ago, my sleep specialist agreed to write me a prescription for 300 mg. of modafinil per day (because I was waking up behind the wheel a half-dozen times or more every time I made the 60-mile drive to see him). That took care of the little problem of risking my life every time I had to drive further than 10 miles or so, but it didn't do a damned thing about me being chronically exhausted.
Oh, I was awake, all right. But modafinil does not make me feel rested, and after two or three consecutive days of 2 hours or fewer of deep sleep, I have to deal with being punchy, having little energy, and experiencing mild visual and auditory hallucinations.
A couple of years ago, my then-insurance company forced me to switch to 250 mg of armodafinil (which is the pure levo-rotary enantiomer of the molecule, unlike modafinil, which is a racemic mixture). That's actually better for me, both because it's twice as powerful, and because it doesn't cause me additional intestinal havoc, as modafinil did. Both of them, however, do cause occasional, severe chills when I'm in bed. (Those typically pass within 10-15 minutes, but they're quite unpleasant in the meantime.)
I have never noticed any adverse impact from either medication on my math skills. Then again, I don't do a lot of math these days ...
(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)
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Check out my novel ...
Academics and scientist have a great flaw of seeming coming up with new discoveries and theories that are then grandiosely cheered by fellow academics and scientist. They run around patting each other on the back with every invention. Is this 4 to 19 stretch just another invention party?