Sleep Tight! Researchers Identify the Beneficial Role of Sleep:
Why do animals sleep? Why do humans "waste" a third time of their lives sleeping? Throughout evolution sleep has remained universal and essential to all organisms with a nervous system, including invertebrates such as flies, worms, and even jellyfish. But the reason why animals sleep -- despite the continuous threat of predators -- still remains a mystery, and is considered among the biggest unanswered questions in life sciences.
In a new study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel reveal a novel and unexpected function of sleep that they believe could explain how sleep and sleep disturbances affect brain performance, aging and various brain disorders.
Using 3D time-lapse imaging techniques in live zebrafish, the researchers were able to define sleep in a single chromosome resolution and show, for the first time, that single neurons require sleep in order to perform nuclear maintenance.
DNA damage can be caused by many processes including radiation, oxidative stress, and even neuronal activity. DNA repair systems within each cell correct this damage. The current work shows that during wakefulness, when chromosome dynamics are low, DNA damage consistently accumulates and can reach unsafe levels.
The role of sleep is to increase chromosome dynamics, and normalize the levels of DNA damage in each single neuron. Apparently, this DNA maintenance process is not efficient enough during the online wakefulness period and requires an offline sleep period with reduced input to the brain in order to occur. "It's like potholes in the road," says Prof. Lior Appelbaum, of Bar-Ilan University's Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, who led the study. "Roads accumulate wear and tear, especially during daytime rush hours, and it is most convenient and efficient to fix them at night, when there is light traffic."
Journal Reference:
D. Zada, I. Bronshtein, T. Lerer-Goldshtein, Y. Garini, L. Appelbaum. Sleep increases chromosome dynamics to enable reduction of accumulating DNA damage in single neurons. Nature Communications, 2019; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08806-w
I think now would be a good time to take a nap.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Thursday March 14 2019, @09:12AM (1 child)
Don't forget clearing out plaque [slashdot.org] if you end up living long enough in the wild to experience geriatric health concerns.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RandomFactor on Thursday March 14 2019, @11:17AM
Or from an article here
for something local :-p
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday March 14 2019, @10:33AM (2 children)
I'll be submitting a story about my intelligence later this morning. Not to brag rather to point out my sheer terror at for example whiling away the hours before the welcome mercy of sleep sets upon me by thinking up vast multitudes of ways to put an end to all life on earth forever.
You don't want to do that.
That I sleep far more than anyone else I have ever heard of was first identified by the maternity ward nurses in the hospital where I was born. That I'm awake now just after three in the morning is that I have always slept very irregularly. While I do have a Circadian Rhythm it is profoundly dysfunctional. That leads me to be unable to hold many kinds of jobs, it's even got me fired from coding jobs where they regarded nine to five as somehow important and was a huge problem when I was in grade school.
When I was in graduate school I was puzzled to discover that I could solve my Quantum Mechanics problem sets in my sleep. I am absolutely serious and my shrink Dr. K. confirmed to me that the effect was real.
As E&M has always been my best class I didn't need to do it in bed.
But for Quantum, for each problem I had to give it a serious, well-intentioned try so as to lodge the problem deep within my psyche. The following morning the answer would magically come to me.
As I writer, I have long known I do my most-creative work when I've not had enough sleep, but my most-effective revision - to do it yourself is "revision", only others may "edit" one's writing - I do my most-effective revision after having gotten good sleep after writing one of my articles, essays, rants and manifestos.
That led to my constant conflict with the Kuro5hin culture, especially its owner Rusty Foster who has otherwise been a close friend. We had the Edit Queue and the Moderation Queue. Both queues enables discussion but when "in edit" one could still... wait for it... edit.
Thus I would post largely incoherent, half-written Walls Of Text then go to bed. That worked really well if I slept like others do, as I could upon awakening, read the critiques then revise my work. But my side of the conflict is that the Edit Timeout should have been forty-eight hours rather than the twenty-four it actually was. Quite commonly that timeout would occur in my sleep; my essays would enter Moderation then be dumped before I got up or shortly after.
One time I posted a brilliant and uncommonly concise proposal to ease the mind of a long-time quite diligent but rather harshly critical Kuro5hin editor by the name of Peter Whysall or pwhysall. This by booking him a round-trip to Amsterdam and a night with a high-class call girl.
:-0
As I felt my... "proposal"... needed no criticism I Submitted To Moderation. Rather than the heated discussion and voting I expected one of his fellow editors deleted my entire fucking account, leading to a fellow kuron to post "Let's All Get Michael Crawford His Account Back". There followed a spirited debate - I had far more haters there than here.
Upon logging in after my morning donut I had no idea of what had just transpired, not until I read with increasing pride and joy that spirited discussion.
Good Times.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday March 14 2019, @02:25PM (1 child)
Severely tempted to tweak you by saying a falsity that it's obvious you didn't get enough sleep last night, but I won't go there.
One thing I've discovered as I age is that the more sleep I get night before the better I do on the exam the next day. At 18 I could party until 4 AM, wake up at 7 AM, and go and get a B on an exam. I'm painfully learning now that if I get less than my full 7 - and 8 or 9 is better still - I end up tanking exams the next day even though I can still work and perform (though I'm probably performing less efficiently). Although the exams I'm taking now are more difficult. But it alters my study strategy as I have to plan for getting sufficient sleep in, no matter my level of preparation.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday March 14 2019, @05:06PM
Kuro5hin's mumble prepared histograms of each Kuron's post timestamps, thereby quite-clearly deducing the time zones from which all but one of us posted.
Which one?
"When does he sleep?" mumble asked of my own perfectly-flat histogram.
I really do sleep far far more than anyone I have ever so much as heard of, it's just that my Circadian Rhythm is so profoundly dysfunctional that I range from days without sleeping, days of sleep interrupted by naught but potty-breaks, cat naps, passing out from sheer exhaustion as well as - I have only recently understood the cause of - frequent but quite-brief Syncope, or fainting.
I at first regarded my Syncope as an extreme form of the Brain Seizures that started occurring not long before the Syncope did - the seizures in Late May of 2010, the Syncope in I think the Spring of 2013, but I don't clearly recall. That the Doctors were at a loss to explain them lead to my calling them "Drop-Outs". I don't actually fall over nor pass out, rather for quite a lot less then a second my entire body relaxes, leading my head to drop forward, with my own internal experience being quite powerfully Hallucinogenic.
You Have Absolutely No Idea.
To Wit:
_This_ is going to be my very first Medium Essay, despite my sheer hatred of Medium's requirement that I log in either with Twitter or Facebook. Despite that, the ensuing $$$$$ Pussy! will be _well_ worth the effort, surely you must agree?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2019, @10:59AM
May as well say it is vibrating energy levels, that would mean just as much as this sentence.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday March 14 2019, @08:52PM
Finally, a clear explanation of the deeper-rooted causes of the Chernobyl disaster. Plus, you know, they had fish operating it.