We Transition Between 19 Different Brain Phases When Sleeping, Study Finds (newatlas.com) 37
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.
Even worse: IN an MRI machine! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.)
Like I keep telling my boss (Score:2)
Gee, thanks (Score:4, Funny)
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...
Another... (Score:1)
waste of space article.
I'm sighted N24 and I've suspected this for years (Score:5, Interesting)
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
MRI is not sleep-friendly (Score:3)
TFA says "no subjects were found to enter REM sleep". This is not a surprise given the insane noise produced by MRI scanners.
Re: (Score:2)
No shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:MRI is not sleep-friendly (Score:4, Informative)
Uhh, plenty of people fall asleep in MRI machines all the time. It's loud, but you wear headphones (that optionally play music) and the loud noises are periodic. And, because you're laying down and stuck immovable for sometimes over an hour, it's natural to start falling asleep.
I've had at least 5 MRIs and lab techs from two different buildings have told me they have people fall asleep all the time.
https://www.quora.com/Have-you... [quora.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/... [reddit.com]
http://1goodfoot.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
https://multiplesclerosis.net/... [multiplesclerosis.net]
[thousands of etc examples]
Re: MRI is not sleep-friendly (Score:2)
Curious. Considering that MRI's involve intense magnetic fields, how can you safely ( as in the headphones not being torn off your head ) wear them? Plus how can the speakers work with out significant distortion?
There are special (non-metallic) pneumatic headphones [scansound.com].
Re: (Score:3)
My one and only experience with an MRI left me feeling shell-shocked for a few hours. That's probably not the best way to describe it, but I went in feeling fine and left feeling completely out of it. I probably shouldn't have been allowed to drive home.
I wasn't offered headphones. They told me it would be loud "just like a rock concert". That's got to be the absolute worst show I ever attended. It was as if AC/DC, Motley Crue, GWAR and the Ramones all got up on stage at the same time and tried to play
Re: (Score:2)
You officially went to a shit-tier MRI lab.
Ask doctors/lab-techs on Reddit, quora, or anywhere else. They will all agree they should have given you earplugs at the minimum.
If people regularly left "shellshocked" from MRIs, we wouldn't be prescribing them except in the most extreme of circumstances.
Re: (Score:2)
I can confirm that from experience. I find the whole MRI scanning experience extremely relaxing.
Re: (Score:3)
and what if the magnetic fields in the MRI are affecting the way the brain operates. IIf we can sense the weak field of the earth, whats going to happen with the strong fields in a MRI
Re: (Score:1)
Am I allowed (Score:2)
Am I allowed to choose which one I self-indentify as?
Re: (Score:2)
I read that as self-indemnify and somehow it made just as much sense.
Seems like this: (Score:2)