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posted by mrpg on Sunday August 12 2018, @07:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the why? dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Sleep is essential for brain functionality and overall health but understanding how sleep delivers its beneficial effects remains largely unknown. Sleep researchers are exploring new and unbiased approaches that can take sleep to a systems level. In one such approach, referred to as 'systems genetics', inferences about biological phenomena can be made by linking together several levels of information from DNA to phenotype via gene expression, proteins and metabolism at the level of a population. Systems genetics offers a global and interconnected view of biological phenomena and is therefore considered critical towards predicting disease susceptibility.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180809141231.htm


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @08:36AM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @08:36AM (#720500)

    Yep it must be garbage collection that brain can't perform "online".
    When you sleep you are vulnerable, so it must be something very important or many species would have evolved out of it.
    That the body uses sleep for other resting/rebuilding functions is just opportunistic.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday August 12 2018, @09:09AM (8 children)

    by anubi (2828) on Sunday August 12 2018, @09:09AM (#720505) Journal

    Yup... one would have thought the need for sleep would have been bred out of us eons ago. All animal species.

    I do not know of any mammal that does not sleep. I am not for sure if there is any animal that does not require sleep.

    And even if they are doing something else which apparently requires cognition, are they sleeping? It is quite obvious to me that my kidneys, digestive system, respiratory, and circulatory system have been running on some sort of autopilot all night. I wake up every morning with two bags that need emptying and one bag wanting something put in it.

    So, a fish that may need to be in motion 24/7 to do whatever fish do that we call breathing, may well be on the same kind of autopilot.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday August 12 2018, @09:59AM (2 children)

      by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Sunday August 12 2018, @09:59AM (#720508) Homepage Journal

      but they are in many ways quite unlike other animals.

      --
      Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Sunday August 12 2018, @02:29PM (3 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Sunday August 12 2018, @02:29PM (#720551)

      Or at least partially solved years ago.

      I don't recall title or authors, but remember reading a study a good while back that claimed to have solved at least one of the driving forces for (deep) sleep:

      The body has two fluid management systems - the circulatory system that delivers oxygen, nutrients, etc., and the lymphatic system which removes waste. But there is no lymphatic system in the brain, the neurons are simply packed too tightly for a second set of plumbing. Instead, cells simply eject waste into the space between them, where it builds up. Then, during deep sleep, the brain cells shrink by about 10-20% and the pulse in your circulatory "massages" the waste down the outside of the capillaries and out of the brain.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by RandomFactor on Sunday August 12 2018, @03:13PM

        by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 12 2018, @03:13PM (#720569) Journal

        Yeah, it looks like they twigged to this about five years ago.

        https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flush-out-toxins-during-sleep [nih.gov]
        https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/10/18/236211811/brains-sweep-themselves-clean-of-toxins-during-sleep [npr.org]

        I remember an article on this a year or so ago (here or /. probably) that covered it as well, talked about the brain compressing in sections much like a sponge for this purpose.

        Essentially the brain is a big chemical factory and if you don't get sleep and do the rinse and repeat thing you start acting more and more impaired as a result (and yes, eventually die.)

        --
        В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by pdfernhout on Monday August 13 2018, @01:28AM (1 child)

        by pdfernhout (5984) on Monday August 13 2018, @01:28AM (#720777) Homepage

        discusses that and many other benefits of sleep: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep [goodreads.com]

        Related podcast: http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker [joerogan.net]

        From something I posted on HN with other ideas from the book ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575177 [ycombinator.com] ):

        * Sleep is when we move memories from shorter-term storage in the hippocampus to longer-term storage in the frontal cortex. If you don't sleep well at night, you lose many memories of the day.

        * Without adequate sleep (about 8 hour a night) your cognitive performance during the day nosedives into the ground -- and the cumulative effects get worse over time. At the same time, you may be less able to recognize this effect.

        * After 20 hours of being awake you are as cognitively impaired as if you were legally drunk.

        * More and worse car accidents happen from drowsy driving then drunk driving. While drunk driving may slow reaction times, drowsy drivers have "microsleeps" where for seconds at a time they stop responding to external stimuli and can unknowingly drift over into oncoming traffic or not stop for a red light or a pedestrian.

        * Sleep is needed to make new immune cells like for preventing cancer.

        * Sleep is needed to process emotional events from the day so we can reflect on what happened without becoming too anxious about it. He gives an example for treating PTSD of veterans via better sleep and a medication that affects dreaming.

        * Sleep-deprived people are more likely to slack off and even make unethical choices. Underslept people also are less charismatic leaders. So less sleep does not equate to more productivity.

        * Sleep (and dreams) are a time when the brain connects random ideas that may lead to useful ideas when awake the next day.

        * Good sleep is absolutely essential to the developing brain in children even from before birth.

        * While ADHD may be a real health condition, many symptoms of sleep deprivation overlap with those of ADHD and so there may be some misdiagnosis going on from that.

        * Some people are naturally early-riser larks and others are naturally late-rising night owls (and many are in the middle). Forcing one to keep the schedule of the other leads to worse performance and more accidents and so on.

        * Teenagers naturally go to sleep later and wake up later than younger children or adults (possibly to give them experience acting independently of their elders in a tribal setting). Delaying the start time for high school students by about an hour in one case lead to a 200+ point increase in SAT scores of top performers -- and in another case to a 60% decrease in car accidents among the teenagers who drove.

        All this is backed by references to recent scientific studies.

        Essentially, as my own analogy, our brains are overclocked during the day and need eight hours of good sleep to fix up all the deferred maintenance.

        He includes advice on getting more and better sleep. One surprising recommendation from the book -- set an alarm to remind you when to go to sleep!

        --
        The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
        • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @02:16AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @02:16AM (#720791)

          set an alarm to remind you when to go to sleep!

          That's crazy enough it might be a good idea.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @01:00AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 13 2018, @01:00AM (#720774)

      Unihemispheric slow-wave sleep [wikipedia.org], some creatures sleep half brain.