18 ms·
Older Adults' Forgetfulness Tied to Faulty Brain Rhythms in Sleep
- 27182818284 9y agoOne of the more fascinating parts to me was how little it took: "If you're like 50 milliseconds too early, 50 milliseconds too late, then the storing mechanism actually doesn't work."
- sp332 9y agoThe cycles are 12 Hz, which is only ~80 ms between pulses. So 40 ms is exactly out of phase.
- jgtrosh 9y agoIf I understand the article, it's the slow waves that have the strong correlation, and those are described as being around one per second. Fifty milliseconds is then around a tenth of the half period, so that does implies a rather important timing precision needed.
- hathawsh 9y agoFascinating indeed. That's not very different from the timing of common music. Could it be that our appreciation of music is somehow related to the way our brains work?
- yesenadam 9y agoHmm.. which common music? I like really fast music (e.g. Coltrane, Charlie Parker) and really slow (Rachmaninov 2nd Symphony, Mahler Adagietto).
- Will_Parker 9y agoThe artists still produced music in tempos quite within the range of human heartbeats and / or breathing.
- stevemk14ebr 9y agoI think music's appeal is related to the rythmns of heartbeats. Logic being you find comfort in being close to another human, an advantage to be in pairs. Therefore the brain is hardwired to prefer rythmns around that pace. Just my theory though
- fuzzfactor 9y agoOne of the most popular recordings of the 20th century was basically in tempo with the resting human heart, with just that intro. "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd
- TimTheTinker 9y agoPerhaps (at-rest) heart beats and stem-level brain waves operate at the same frequency?
- hypertexthero 9y agoYes. See Harmonic Experience: Tonal Harmony from Its Natural Origins to Its Modern Expression by W.A. Mathieu https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114365.Harmonic_Experience https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114365.Harmonic_Experien...
- agumonkey 9y agoI strongly believe the many appeals of music is deeply related to many brain functions. As a drummer, polyrythms have altered the way I sense space, balance and time. Playing sophisticated patterns requires fine quantization of time and distributed coordination in all limbs. When you reach this you basically become better at many kinds of kinematics. You have finer control of each movements and a more abstract interpretation of the balance and state of all your limbs. It's not hard to see how valuable this would be for an animal. Learning harmonization also tickles the brain deeply (try to isolate a 7th counterpoint like melody and enjoy the bliss).
- harshaw 9y agoI wonder if this is at all related to the idea of interactive metronome therapy. See https://www.interactivemetronome.com/what-is-im https://www.interactivemetronome.com/what-is-im Im seems to be about improving "Neurotiming".
- chiefalchemist 9y agoSleep allows the brain to catch up on the day's events. That is, it buffers certain things to be processed in full later. Disrupt that process - e.g., not enough sleep, alcohol (as a REM sleep disruptor) - and memory will go sideways. I'd be interested in knowing how many of the prescription drugs common among older adults have REM disruption as a side-effect. I wonder if that's even tested for. Perhaps we're managing one set of ills only to create another?
- rectangletangle 9y agoAlthough not normally considered a prescription drug, Cannabis has marked affects on the REM sleep phase.
- superb_herb 9y agoI know from personal experience that cannabis will make you extremely drowsy but completely eliminate dreaming, and that it will really mess up your short-term memory.
- jimhefferon 9y agoWhich are ...? (not a cannabis user, just curious).
- kharms 9y agoAccording to a study from the 70s, cannabis interferes with REM sleep. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-teenage-mind/200906/marijuana-sleep-and-dreams https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-teenage-mind/200906...
- rectangletangle 9y agoGenerally heavy cannabis users don't dream as often or vividly as normal. One of the primary symptoms of cannabis withdrawal is extremely vivid dreams. I don't know if there's been any formal studies on this in particular, but I've heard enough independent anecdotes, that I'm convinced there is some relation. Above was just the subjective part, there have been studies on the objective effects of cannabis on REM sleep, where it appears to decrease total REM sleep duration. As far as the implications of this go, your guess is as good as mine.
- trendia 9y agoFrom the paper, it looks like the area involved is the medial pre-frontal cortex (mPFC). Give mPFC's role in memory, my initial suspicion is that the brain rhythms are a symptom, and not a cause, of memory loss. That means that fixing the brain rhythms might not fix the underlying memory problems. It's also worthy to note that moderate exercise can improve connectivity of the mPFC, so that is at least one way to avoid these troubles.
- sabujp 9y agoso basically proving the old adage that it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks ..but maybe we can get around this by wearing electrodes on our heads to fix this as we get older, one can only hope.
- dreamdu5t 9y agoBest thing I did for my sleep and my life was quit drinking alcohol and caffeine. I feel like I sleep twice as good and feel twice as better throughout the day. No exaggeration. But the social pressure to use these drugs is intense, as most of the population is addicted to some degree.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoBoth alcohol and caffeine get related to health benefits in the popular press (including science press).
- j79 9y agoAh, I'll have to share this with my wife! We welcomed our first child in November. Since then, we've been pretty sleep deprived thanks to the nightly feedings and diaper changes. Both of us were remarking this morning how forgetful we had become, even to the point that we couldn't recall how the night had gone.
- DaTruthHurts 9y agoCongrats to having a child. A study claims, "Stimulating the Brain’s Emotional Center Enhances Memory" https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/stimulating-the-brains-emotional-center-enhances-memory https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/st... Perhaps you can deduce a cognitive exercise to juggle up your memory prowess?
- whafro 9y agoSince having a kid myself, I've pretty much settled on the notion that it's an evolutionary trick: since you don't sleep much, you don't remember the hellish times during those early months (years?), so you're willing to have a second – or third, or fourth – kid down the road.
- aerophilic 9y agoHa! Funny but makes sense, though I think in this case it is a by product of our young forcing us to “pay attention” to them. The thing I always found more interesting is how babies tend to look more like their fathers than mothers at birth. The evolutionary advantage being to make it more obvious “who’s kid it is”. It is fairly easy to know the mother, but harder to “prove” the father, at least evolutionary speaking.
- wincy 9y agoThe young aren’t forcing you to “pay attention” to them, they just want their needs met. One of those needs is to not be eaten by snakes or other predators, so they don’t want to be alone. How people ever came up with the idea that putting a helpless baby in a different room was a good idea or even preferable to just cosleeping is beyond me.
- aantix 9y agoIs it me, or do a lot of older people snore? Is there some sort of muscle that relaxes in the throat that as we age, causes that? And if that's the case, is a simple CPAP part of the solution to this issue?
- wahern 9y agoWeight, tissue elasticity, muscle tone: all three are effected by aging, and all three effect snoring.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoI think one snores more when drunk too.
- TheDauthi 9y agoAssuming we're really talking about sleep apnea, which snoring is a symptom of, and does affect your sleep in some really nasty ways. The prevalence of memory problems goes beyond what apnea would cover. Let's talk stats for a second: There's a buildup of fatty tissue as you age. The soft palate changes in shape, and you're more likely to gain weight. Weight is the largest component, gender is secondary, and age is tertiary. Interestingly, while sleep apnea is more likely to occur as you age, the severity goes down. Incidence in male population goes to about 20% after the age of 75. For women, it's a bit over 10 - though that's just an estimate because women show symptoms at a different rate. I somewhat wish apnea was the cause, for selfish reasons. There would be more drive to improve the machines, and as a bonus, these people could start getting treated.
- verulito 9y agoThere's also skeletal changes with age: the facial skeleton shrinks starting in our 40s-50s. Got a reference for severity claim? That measured in terms of AHI or significance of the events?
- kingmanaz 9y agoNot sure if any here have tried it, but would looping a recording of isochronic delta-wave tones during sleep help sync brain rhythms?
- l33tbro 9y agoThis was my thought too. I use these nightly and sleep like a baby. I'd argue that it's also past the point of being a placebo, as I have done this for over a year and have only found a couple of tones that are actually effective. This is the current favorite: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/isochronicBrainwaveGenerator.php https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/isochronicBrainwaveGenerat...
- lolc 9y agoLooks like I'm going to be the guy to shout "correlation is not causation" today. What if older brains decide to filter more, store less and this is reflected in the brainwave patterns? A young brain might go "accept accept accept accept...." whereas an older brain might go "accept reject reject accept reject...". I'm pretty happy about having forgotten a lot of stuff. After all, the older you get, the more you have to throw out to accommodate new memories. And it's mostly trash. So why remember it over sweet youth?
- InclinedPlane 9y agoWe're talking specifically about people forgetting things that they want to remember, I don't think your hypothesis applies.
- sitkack 9y agoIt might be harder for older brains to forget the right stuff. Wanting to remember something and remembering something isn't as much of a conscious choice as we would like. I have noticed that my recall speed is exponential in the quality of sleep and exercise. If I work out, have a great sleep (post exercise sauna), I am sharp. If I trash myself, I have a noticeable 500ms+ access latency. Not for concepts, but for words. Words always take longer.
- Veratyr 9y ago> To confirm the finding, though, researchers will have to show that it's possible to cause memory problems in a young brain by disrupting these rhythms, Seibt says. To be fair, the article does say this, albeit without discussing it very much.
- antonvs 9y agoThe other correlation/causation error is the idea that the desynchronization of the waves is a cause of the issue rather than a symptom. It's a bit like listening to a car's engine and saying that cars that go slowly are doing so because their engines are emitting a low-pitched sound instead of a higher-pitched one.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoThey outline the experiment they need to run, every participant gets a neuro hat but neither the participants or investigators know if the participant got a 'sync the waves' hat or a 'disrupt the waves' hat. Then look at the results and unblind the hat choices. EDIT: From the article -- "But the study also suggests that it's possible to improve an impaired memory by re-synchronizing brain rhythms during sleep. One way to do this would be by applying electrical or magnetic pulses through the scalp. "The idea is to boost those brain waves and bring them back together," Helfrich says. Walker already has plans to test this approach to synchronizing brain waves."
- SpikeDad 9y agoOh geez. Wondering why my sleep quality has diminished as I got older and my memory, um... Forgot what I was going to say. 8-(
- placeholderNam 9y agoHaha, your choice in emoji gives away your age in any case.
- TimTheTinker 9y agoNote that HN doesn’t support Unicode in comments, so plaintext emojis are the only option.
- Stratoscope 9y agoSome Unicode works here — like the preceding em dash and the hair spaces around it, along with bullets: • One • Two
- Malice 9y agoThe point might have been that with access to emojis (on other platforms) youngsters no longer use the oldschool emojis. Use of oldschool emojis strongly suggests oldschool poster :)
- TimTheTinker 9y agoUse of the word "emoticon" instead of "emoji" would also be a strong indicator :)
- leggomylibro 9y agoI've been wondering about this lately. Honestly, and it kind of pains me to say this, I'm coming to the conclusion that alcohol is Bad. Hey, quit laughing - I don't think that it is necessarily unhealthy to try and smooth out some of the bumps along life's road, but there have got to be better ways. And don't say, 'exercise.' The cognitive hits of alcohol are just looking like they're too long term. Not even over a lifetime, but over a week. With all the information coming in about how it messes with our REM cycles and potentially inhibits learning that took place over the past day or two from sticking to your brain...I dunno. What is the point of dropping your day's problems on the floor in the evening if doing so prevents you from learning or benefiting from the experience? Edit: By which I mean, alcohol seems to cause a lot of issues around what your brain does while it sleeps, which seems to be what this article is calling out as a problem that can be exacerbated with age. Sorry, I guess I kind of jumped between topics there...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jghn 9y agoI recently got an apple watch and along the way installed a sleep tracking app. I was skeptical of its accuracy until I realized that I could identify the nights I'd been drinking with 100% accuracy as those nights the tracker didn't seem to think I slept hardly at all. I always knew I'd be tired the next day but this was eye opening.
- 36bydesign 9y agoWhat app did you use? I want to try this also.
- LeoPanthera 9y agoNot OP but I use Autosleep. Works well.
- jghn 9y ago
- undoware 9y agoQuite by accident, I've discovered that taking a microdose amount of the antipsychotic (!!) seroquel/quetiapine dramatically improves sleep quality and amount. I use about half a 25mg pill every night. You have vivid, happy (no, really) dreams, and you sleep like the dead for 8h. In fact, the depth of sleep is the only drawback, IMO, as you can't take it if you're late to bed, or you will miss work. A moderate dose of seroquel for actual psychosis would be like 400mg, and a typical off-brand use for sleep would be like 100mg, which is what my partner was on when I decided to take one of her pills (with her consent) and see what was up. I can't recommend higher than 25mg, however. A nice indica also helps, in my experience. It wouldn't surprise me if bedtime use of both these things are discovered to protect memory in older adults.
- jalopy 9y agoSo does anyone have recommendations on how to improve brainwave coordination and reverse the symptoms indicated in the article? Any tips, techniques, practices, other than avoiding alcohol/caffeine?
- frozenport 9y agoOne way to do this would be by applying electrical or magnetic pulses through the scalp. :-)
- lhuser123 9y agoI would recommend the book “Make your brain smarter “ by Sandra Bond Chapman.