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So what this may be telling us is that sleep is required for beings with nerve cells, rather than solely for those with concentrated and clearly defined brains.
by meri_dian 9y ago
So what this may be telling us is that sleep is required for beings with nerve cells, rather than solely for those with concentrated and clearly defined brains. This would make sense. All animals with brains sleep, but diversity of brain configuration and design exhibited across all of these different animal species would indicate that there's no single aspect of a brain that demands sleep, and therefore sleep is not an emergent property of collections of neurons forming brains but something the neurons themselves demand in order to function.
- jldugger 9y agoPossible. Or it could just be light as a confounding signal -- they get energy from it, after all, and animals with brains and eyes will spend energy more efficiently during the day. A much older article on jellyfish sleep suggests this proposed advantage, at least: https://search.proquest.com/openview/c958b584511e462a64623c59b7a6bd0a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40810 https://search.proquest.com/openview/c958b584511e462a64623c5...
- meri_dian 9y agoWell I was thinking that light could impact the availability of their food source and so what the researchers interpret as sleep is just some other form of energy conservation, but the 'groggy' behavior of the jellyfish in their one experiment made me think that their energy conserving state does involve their neurons and so at that point it's hard to distinguish energy conservation from sleep.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y agoThe three criteria mentioned are designed specifically to avoid confusion with general metabolic factors like you suggest.
- shpongled 9y agoI think this is a good guess. I'm not a neuroscientist (but I am a biochemist), but I could see a valid hypothesis involving receptor desensitization.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- katastic 9y agoI'm not trying to be snarky (in case it sounds like it): But I thought that was the obvious part? Brains are made of neurons and (I thought) neurons produce biproducts that have to be "cleaned up" or they slow down/stop working. Isn't that also why (or one possible reason they think why) people with Alzheimer lose their brains? That it was somehow related to the brain's neuron "clean up" helpers that stop working or die off. Then again, the less obvious thing is that the spinal cord has neurons. So I wonder if this comes into play there...