The Purpose of Sleep? To Forget, Scientists Say (nytimes.com) 145
Over the years, scientists have come up with a lot of ideas about why we sleep. From a report on NYTimes: Some have argued that it's a way to save energy. Others have suggested that slumber provides an opportunity to clear away the brain's cellular waste. A pair of papers published on Thursday in the journal Science offer evidence for another notion: We sleep to forget some of the things we learn each day (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source). In order to learn, we have to grow connections, or synapses, between the neurons in our brains. These connections enable neurons to send signals to one another quickly and efficiently. We store new memories in these networks.
Purpose of sleep (Score:2, Interesting)
Is to create more fake news
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Re: Purpose of sleep (Score:2)
Wake me up (Score:4, Funny)
In 4 years please.
Re:Wake me up (Score:5, Funny)
Have you tried turning yourself off and on again?
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I suspect there is a lot of self turn on...
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Tragically, I know too many people who have turned themselves off. Not one has been able to turn themselves back on again.
Except this one guy about 2000 years ago.
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Re:Wake me up (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're implying that Trump is some how anti-semetic or anti-Jewish, may I remind you that his Daughter and Son-in-Law are Jewish. Or is this more of a subtle attempt to brandish him as "Hitler"?
Hopefully neither is the case. But I do recommend the following link as a read no matter what your political stripe may be. Maybe then we can stop calling everything we don't like "Hitler" or "Nazi"
https://regiehammblog.wordpres... [wordpress.com]
Re: When he treats his daughter like a daughter (Score:2)
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If you're implying that Trump is some how anti-semetic or anti-Jewish, may I remind you that his Daughter and Son-in-Law are Jewish.
I don't think that anyone is implying that Trump's going after the Jews - It's his apparent attitude toward another religious group that has some people calling him out.
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You mean the 7 countries Obama identified as Terrorist sponsoring countries? Those people?
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You mean the 7 countries Obama identified as Terrorist sponsoring countries? Those people?
Yes, of course those people. Are you saying that there's no objection being voiced to a perceived attitude toward Islam? I didn't think I was being that controversial - I wasn't even trying to justify the objection.
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your Muslim bias argument is based on fantasy.
My Muslim bias argument? I'm not out in the streets - I'm not even calling the man out. I simply said that there's an objection right now to a perceived attitude. Whether that attitude is real or justified is a completely different matter - But if you think there's no objection to the perception, you're blind.
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If you're implying that Trump is some how anti-semetic or anti-Jewish ...
Trump is not anti-Jewish*, but he sure does not like the other semites. [google.com.au] Excpet the Saudis - they're good for business. Love the Untied States.
* Trump made Steve Bannon leave his white hood at home.
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To those who say that Hitler only likes blond aryans, let me remind you that he is a short black haired man.
Re:Wake me up (Score:5, Insightful)
Great idea, but you'd miss the elections, and if everyone except the Trump supporters did this, you'd have to sleep for another 4 years.
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You're no fun.
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You are doing adulthood wrong.
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you mean 8 years, of course... he's already planning his reelection.
https://nypost.com/2017/02/01/trump-has-already-raised-16m-toward-re-election/
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FTFY
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In 4 years please.
If a giant asteroid was a heading toward Earth, would you rather use what little time you had left, or sleep through it and die without knowing?
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Just in time for the next 4 years of Trump!
You missed the Evita style funeral of Hillary (both fascist despots) and Bill's funeral (Juan Perone, another fascist). Their "foundation" was taken apart just as the Perone's charity was. In a few years Andrew Webber will write another musical about them and their trail of dead bodies. It'll probably star Lady Gaga as the dominatrix and Tom Hanks as the dominated Bill.
Also, missed George Soros' funeral, right after he did the evil guy on the next Star Wars movie.
Re-worded title (Score:2)
Rebooting flushes RAM.
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Rebooting flushes RAM.
Sort of. It's a function of the bios to set the ram to a consistent state. Even a power cycle means that the bits stored in ram are in a random state on start, the bios makes sure that doesn't happen. A reboot means they would still be in the same state prior to the reboot *IF* the bios did not set the ram state prior to booting. That can really trip you up with some things if you are unaware of it.
Besides, aren't we off-topic? Aren't we supposed to be talking about Trump and blah blah. ;)
All of the above (Score:4, Interesting)
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It seems rather obvious that the primary reason for sleep is to conserve energy when being awake isn't very useful (at night when you can't see anything). It also makes sense that the body has then evolved to do other useful things while sleeping.
Doesn't pass the basic acid test. Why do nocturnal creatures sleep? The night is when they are active and they can see perfectly fine in the day. No need for sleep at all according to your theory. :)
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I forget everything from last week... (Score:2)
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Oddly this may be sleep related, I had real problems with memory, turns out it was related to severe sleep apnea.
Since I work in government IT, I have to get up at 4:30AM to catch two local busses and an express bus to start work at 7:00AM. Most nights I'm drifting off at 8:30PM, sometimes 10:30PM or later. With a one-hour commute to and from work, I can quite deliberately forget about work as I never take work home. Weekends and three-day holidays are difficult to recover from on Monday mornings.
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Government employee huh?
I've always kept a notebook at work to record my daily activities. Something that several managers tried to stop me from doing when they figured out I was documenting their actions as well as my own. It's hard to throw someone under the bus when they kept good documentation for the HR department.
That explains why I always seem to experience a case of the Monday's when dealing with government services.
Uh, no. Every bureaucrat on the planet has to have their meetings first thing on Monday mornings, putting a strain on limited government resources to meet the demand over the Intertubes. Fortunately, I'm only attend
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You may want to investigate using a diary instead as it may have specific and additional protections under your local laws. A notebook may be claimed as a method to capture confidential information and therefore subject to a search, where as a diary (and its associated habit) can be admissible as evidence in some courts and is a private document, YMMV.
I think you are ahead of a lot of people who just stumble from day to day aimlessly. I too have a regular diary habit that extends back 20 or more years. It
Purpose of sleep is to forget? (Score:5, Funny)
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But it doesn't last.
"Trump who? Oh, right, that guy. Another round, please!"
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It's to make those members of the opposite sex that are attracted to you, attractive enough to you, while you are still sober enough to be any use to them.
Like all important things, it's about balance.
And this explains... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not getting any sleep is fatal. The theory that sleep's main function is "to forget" doesn't explain that. Of course, the post didn't claim that was its sole function, but I'd say it implied it. Scientific American had an article on sleep last year which favored the garbage removal theory. It's not very smart to think that sleep has a single purpose, imho. The fact that all mammals sleep, (some only half a brain at a time) and as far as I know all birds, reptiles, amphibians, and some (not all) fish sleep. Plus some insects enter a state similar to sleep, as do roundworms. Such a broad adoption clearly indicates it has a very strong evolutionary driving/survival force behind it.
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Not getting any sleep is fatal. The theory that sleep's main function is "to forget" doesn't explain that. Of course, the post didn't claim that was its sole function, but I'd say it implied it.
Well, I'd say the summary implied that this may be sleep's primary function, probably not the "sole" one. But I take your point.
Scientific American had an article on sleep last year which favored the garbage removal theory.
Yes, the theory itself is hardly new. These two new studies seem to support it. It does seem to make intuitive sense, since a lot of our brain's activity has to do with getting rid of all the "noise." People who are working with AI these days realize how difficult it can be to get a system to sort out the patterns from the noise, particularly when it comes to greater abstractio
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* Forget unimportant crap.
* Solidify New Memories.
* Clear out built-up toxins.
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This explains why the only stuff I can remember is unimportant crap.
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You are right we would die. /. example would you prefer your computer do heavy background functions while you are working, slowing all your efforts by half?
Why? Because lots and lots of bodily maintenance happens when we're sleeping. Cells can't rebuild fast enough or old cells thoroughly flush out when we're awake because they're actively managing a busy body. But when we shut down... the lack of activity allows healing, scrubbing, and other organic functions to take place with great results. In a more
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We don't know much about sleep, and we don't even know if sleep deprivation can be lethal.
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Let's electrocute rats every now and then during 10 days, and fail to mention it in the abstract!
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i think it's more likely that during sleep, as your body resets the systems it needs things that have not been strongly re-inforced are forgotten.
as you point out, sleep is wired in at an extremely low level.
researchers don't seem to assign as much importance to that fact as you would think it deserves.
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Conceivably, it does. This theory goes that sleep makes us forget in order to do "housekeeping" for the brain. If the brain gets too cluttered, runs this line of thinking, it starts failing to function. Several neural failure could indeed lead to death.
Synapses shrink during sleep (Score:2)
Scientific American had an article on sleep last year which favored the garbage removal theory.
Yet more evidence for this theory:
http://neurosciencenews.com/sl... [neurosciencenews.com]
As someone who's done plenty of sleep deprivation and polyphasic sleeping, I'm about pretty sure I can actually feel the garbage being removed. It mostly happens in the first 60-90 mins of sleep. If one is woken between 30 mins and 60 mins, one's mind tends to be missing several functions. ;)
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I have a circadian rhythm disorder. Not that long ago I free ran on my innate 25.5 hour circadian day for three years, before I discovered that only sustained release melatonin is able to fix my problem (the shortest circadian day I achieved on any dose/formulation of non-SR mel was 24.15 hours, which required me to discontinue for two out of every five-six weeks for vertical retrace).
2016 was the first year of my adult life where I didn't lose entrainment with the calendar day.
But it's still not a bed of
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The purpose of sleep is to allow your eye 'looking beams' to recharge. If you don't recharge them they will slowly lose power and your vision will become darker and darker (for an average person, this will happen in the evening). During winter the cold will also drain your eye 'looking beams' quicker - hence your vision will become darker earlier in the evening.
Not working (Score:2)
There are certainly embarrassing events in my past that I would prefer to forget, but I don't seem to be able to.
Why isn't it working for me?
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No kidding. For me, the more I try to avoid thinking about the embarrassing thing, the more acute it gets as my brain forces me to relive the moment over and over again.
TBH, this is why I don't hang around people, I always end up saying or doing something that I later analyze and construe as hyper embarrassing, even if it wasn't really. It's probably a medical condition of some kind...
Sometimes (a lot actually) the thought will come on so suddenly and so strongly that I make a weird non-verbal sound, whimpe
Who needs sleep! (Score:1)
I don't need sleep to forget things.
God's a script kiddie (Score:5, Funny)
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The purpose of sleep is to forget. (Score:2)
I need more sleep.
And...? (Score:2)
Please try and write summaries that at least get somewhere close to the crux of the story, and don't just trail off mid-concept.
In 2003, Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli, biologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposed that synapses grew so exuberantly during the day that our brain circuits got “noisy.” When we sleep, the scientists argued, our brains pare back the connections to lift the signal over the noise.
So basically... (Score:2)
Only one purpose? That sounds stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can think of at least 5 reasons for sleep off the top of my head, and several have nothing to do with the brain:
1) Eliminate unwanted memories, like this study suggested.
2) Reduce consumption during periods of low resources, enabling longer life. I.E. Consume fewer calories in winter.
3) Rest the body giving it time to repair minor every day issue without constant strain.
4) Time for the unconcious brain to do deep thinking and solve long term problems
5) To allow the body to expand all it's resources to fix major illnesses, such as Small Pox, because it literally takes EVERYTHING we got.
Implications for PTSD treatment? (Score:4, Insightful)
FTA:
"That night, the scientists injected a chemical into the brains of some of the mice. The chemical had been shown to block neurons in dishes from pruning their synapses. The next day, the scientists put all the mice back in the chamber they had been in before. Both groups of mice spent much of the time frozen, fearfully recalling the shock. But when the researchers put the mice in a different chamber, they saw a big difference. The ordinary mice sniffed around curiously. The mice that had been prevented from pruning their brain synapses during sleep, on the other hand, froze once again. Dr. Diering thinks that the injected mice couldn’t narrow their memories down to the particular chamber where they had gotten the shock. Without nighttime pruning, their memories ended up fuzzy."
I'm far, far away from being a neurologist, so I may be totally off track here. But these results remind me of what PTSD sufferers go through, and I have to wonder if they're related. Might the emotions experienced in response to traumatic events, be so strong as to alter neurons, synapses, or brain chemistry in such a way that the synapses aren't pruned in the normal way by sleep? Or perhaps the loss of sleep that results from traumatic experiences results in something like setting the 'immutable' bit on a file?
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Why are these scientists torturing mice?
So we don't end up torturing humans.
cache cleaning (Score:1)
Zombie Nation (Score:2)
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No mod points, so I'll just say "thank you" for the article instead.
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Zombie Nation describes the harm sleep deprivation is doing to the United States.
I was going to ask what the hell a bunch of German techno producers would know about it, but I guess they've spent a few late nights in clubs over the years.
(And yeah- I know. I used to think that too, but "Kernkraft 400" was actually the name of the song...)
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The Professor (Score:2)
Farnsworth: And what makes my engines truly remarkable is the afterburner, which delivers 200% fuel efficiency.
Cubert: That's especially impossible.
Farnsworth: Not at all. It's very simple.
Cubert: Then explain it.
Farnsworth: Now that's impossible! It came to me in a dream and I forgot it in another dream.
Not maintenance? (Score:1)
Cerebrospinal fluid cleanse (Score:1)
I also seem to recall reading that when you sleep (properly), your brain also gets flooded with cerebrospinal fluid, which cleans a type of "plaque" from between pathways in the brain. This plaque has been seen as possibly contributing to various mental/cognitive degenerative conditions
I can't find the exact thing I read previously, but here [scientificamerican.com] appears to be an article on it.
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your brain also gets flooded with cerebrospinal fluid, which cleans a type of "plaque" from between pathways
So, you're saying that cerebrospinal fluid is basically mental floss [mentalfloss.com] then?
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I'm not a brain scientist, but basically sounds something like Plax for the ol' grey matter.
To Forget Scientists, say... (Score:2)
I forgot what I was going to say here.
Task Scheduling (Score:2)
Odd juxtaposition. Let's put it this way with some fake news. There once was a time when all there was was day. Then suddenly God made night. In a first stage the Day-beings spent their nights waiting, saving energy and keeping save. But in a later stage they started doing too much of some activities during the day because they could postprocess/recover/clean
The question isn't, "why do we sleep?" (Score:2)
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Vive La France (Score:2)
confusing summary (Score:2)
To forget is to store new memories?
According to Macbeth (Score:2)
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--
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To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
Hamlet's Soliloquy
Zzzzzz .... (Score:2)
Zzzzzzz
The Is No One Purpose for Sleep (Score:2)
The need for "sleep" (regular periods of markedly reduced activity, distinct from mere rest) is virtually universal across the vertebrate sub-phylum at least, with a last common ancestor 500 million years ago, found in every family (though not necessarily obviously so in every species).
This extraordinary common pattern in creatures with radically different environments and life habits, persisting over such a vast stretch of evolutionary time, alone suggests there is not "one reason" for it, and indeed a l
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I thought that is why we drink? (Score:2)
I think this study actually raises more questions than it answers: If we sleep to forget, than what is the purpose of drinking?
Don't know about you, but (Score:2)
Amount of darkness; not sleep (Score:2)
Quite The Reverse (Score:1)
During sleep, we are not recording nearly as much data as when awake, giving the brain the opportunity to prioritize which earlier experiences need to be retained in long-term storage.
Many theorize that during REM sleep, while dreaming, we are actually re-living various experiences gathered throughout the day. By re-examining these experiences, they have a better chance of being retained long-term.
Remembering a pretty suns
Re:what scientists? (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect I am feeding a troll, but just in case you are just completely incompetent.
The article from The Guardian has the links right in the article.
Giulio Tononi [wisc.edu]
Chiara Cirelli [wisc.edu]
First link in Google
Ohio Sleep Medicine Institute [sleepmedicine.com]
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There are no Giulio Tononi or Chiara Cirelli listed as professors on UoW's websites.
They are at the UofW School of Medicine, which is someone separate from UoW's academic campus. Here are their bios: Chiara Cirelli [wisc.edu], Giulio Tononi [wisc.edu].