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For two decades, Francesco Benedetti, who heads the psychiatry and clinical psychobiology unit at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, has been investigating so-called wake therapy, in combination with bright light exposure and lithium, as a means of treating depression where drugs have often failed. As a result, psychiatrists in the USA, the UK and other European countries are starting to take notice, launching variations of it in their own clinics. These 'chronotherapies' seem to work by kick-starting a sluggish biological clock; in doing so, they're also shedding new light on the underlying pathology of depression, and on the function of sleep more generally.
"Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression," says Benedetti. If you're healthy and you don't sleep, you'll feel in a bad mood. But if you're depressed, it can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities. But, Benedetti adds, there's a catch: once you go to sleep and catch up on those missed hours of sleep, you'll have a 95% chance of relapse.
So pulling more all-nighters makes me feel better?
Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180123-can-staying-awake-beat-depression
(Score: 1) by zugedneb on Thursday January 25 2018, @03:29PM
One would be that you "being" is the most difficult computational object in the universe.
And the control mechanisms around it should also be pretty complicated...
Have noticed, may of course be wrong, that depressed people can not stop paying attention to the own self.
Instead, they enforce a feedback loop, where thinking about the self moves them into certain moods or mindsets.
In the same way that the body has a "starvation" mode, the brain might also have various states, where resources are allocated in a different way.
Perhaps, mild or a bit above mild sleep deprivation can cause the brain to change the mode of operation off the mechanism that makes you able to "sense" your own self and being, and that in its turn leads to other mental processes have more attention, and more hardware available.
Anyways, the above is one of the reasons i like allnighters and computer games. In both situations and get an attenuated impression of own being, and get a more stable mood.
Also, one method of not getting tired is to stay away from thoughts that provoke strong chemical reactions. Less hormones and chemicals, less need to rest... Or so some say...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax