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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
During the hours of sleep the memory performs a cleaning shift. A study led by a Spanish scientist at the University of Cambridge reveals that when we sleep, the neural connections that collect important information are strengthened and those created from irrelevant data are weakened until they get lost.
Throughout the day, people retain a lot of information. The brain creates or modifies the neural connections from these data, elaborating memories. But most of the information we receive is irrelevant and it does not make sense to keep it. In such a case, the brain would be overloaded.
So far there have been two hypotheses about how the sleeping brain modifies the neural connections created throughout the day: while one of them argues that all of them are reinforced during sleep hours, the other maintains that their number is reduced.
[...] According to the expert, in the event that all these links were reinforced equally during sleep, the brain would be saturated by an extreme overexcitement of the nervous system.
In the study, published in the Neuron journal, the researchers stimulated the neuronal connections of mice subjected to a type of anesthesia that achieves a brain state similar to the slow wave sleep phase in humans.
[...] The results show that during slow wave sleep, the largest connections are maintained while the smaller ones are lost. This brain mechanism improves the signal-to-noise ratio -- important information remains and the dispensable is discarded -- and allows the storage of various types of information from one day to the next without losing the previous data. That is, those that have already been considered relevant are kept in that state without having to reinforce them. According to González Rueda, the brain "puts order" during the hours of sleep, discarding the weakest connections to ensure stronger and consolidated memories.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180315110640.htm
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday March 18 2018, @06:56AM (4 children)
I got the idea the brain is doing "disk defragging" during sleep.
Personally, I find most of my creativity happens while I am asleep. Finally things come together as to how to do something in a far more elegant way.
Not only that, I find lost names often come back to me - in dreams - when I virtually meet them again. All sorts of "lost fragments" of memories seem to be in some sort of motion.
It must be quite important to us to sleep, as the pure economics as well as having all ones senses/ability to avoid predators during sleep should have bred this shutdown time out of us a long time ago. How a species that is in shutdown mode half the time competes for resources with one that does not have that restriction?
Now, that I am in retirement, one thing that I see quite clearly now in retrospect, was just how poorly I performed at mentally intensive tasks when I did not sleep enough... and I don't mean just bed time - if I were so worked up over something that resulted in restless nights, it took a very heavy toll on my creativity.
I will get far more use of one hour of genuinely creative time than a month of "being behind the desk" - that is - if I am engaged in a problem that is in need of a elegant solution, otherwise I can stare at that problem for years and the answer just will not "come to" me. I am very prone to being "locked up" into inaction by pressure, much as I will get paralyzed in a traffic jam where everyone's honking and making threatening moves, and the only safe course of action I can see is to stay put, as anything I put in motion, I am responsible for, and I know more than anyone else that I do not know what I am doing!
I never did master that management-prized attribute of "working under pressure" and "multitasking". If not permitted to "do it right", I would try to shut down and minimize the use of resources to make junk, just to get some head to shut up.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday March 18 2018, @09:45AM (2 children)
Among the theories as to why we need sleep is that it resulted from a strategy to avoid nocturnal predators:
Stay very still and very quiet until the sun rises again.
I have found through actual experience that my body really does _not_ need sleep.
But it does need rest.
Last time I was in the slammer it was for several months. I did not sleep the whole time. But when they dimmed the lights, I would lie quietly - yet awake - until the lights came back on.
But there turned out to be a problem that led me to regard Resting Without Sleeping as a really bad idea:
To rest without sleep makes me psychotic. Total batshit insanity. Not ten minutes after being released I told a couple random strangers in downtown Vancouver that I was a Secret Service Agent.
I Am Absolutely Serious.
Not long ago I realized that there is always some tiny speck of truth from which sprouts the Baobab Trees of my madness:
I have a friend who knows Jimmy Carter. In fact, Carter reads his blog.
How I went from my friend bragging about his blog to being a Secret Service agent I will leave as an exercise for the reader.
One More:
If I Sleep Without Resting I Become Manic.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @07:11PM
See dear readers if you don't sleep enough there's a chance you'll damage your brain and end up like MDC.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday March 19 2018, @01:20PM
Your story actually very much shows why sleep is utterly necessary. It appears to me that sleep deprivation eventually results in incorrect associational pathways. Fail to sleep and eventually you make a fatal mistake. Other aspects of biochemistry also occur.
I think I see what you are saying - they body can continue to function despite a lack of sleep. But you learned that any body pays a price for that. There is one very rare condition [wikipedia.org] that appears to be invariably fatal for those who literally cannot sleep.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @08:14PM
It seems what my brain likes to do at night is this (a simple algorithm):
drop table memoriesOfToday;