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Questions. Does this explain - Why we dream? - Why we process information while we sleep? - Why lack of sleep is associated with serious health problems? -

Questions. Does this explain - Why we dream? - Why we process information while we sleep? - Why lack of sleep is associated with serious health problems? - Why the amount of sleep is so long - about a third of the day in the most common case - but varies a lot from person to person and by age? A model of a brain as a neural network that's constantly learning, but for stability purposes needs a restart every so often, doesn't seem convincing in terms of other things we think we know about sleep.

Symmetry 6y ago
1) REM sleep is associated learning new skills. We can teach experimental subjects a new skill in the laboratory, selectively interrupt their REM sleep, and see that their skill doesn't increase to the same extent as a control group who don't have that phase interrupted. The same isn't true with non-REM sleep. We don't really understand the mechanism though and this potentially does bear directly on the question. 2) Well, it would get in the way of actually living? If you're talking down some stairs and then your brain's motor cortex starts working on consolidating a skill and you fall you'd hurt yourself. 3) I don't think we know that. Possibly we had to sleep for memory related reasons and our bodies just evolved to use that time for other sorts of important housekeeping when it wasn't moving around doing stuff? 4) Learning is very important and takes time. In addition to the procedural memory consolidation in REM sleep we also move long term memory to a more stable form of storage in other phases. But neural nets don't really have anything analogous to a brain's explicit memory so this doesn't really bare on that.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  #3: Doesn't hibernation suggest the reverse? Sleep is primarily an energy conserving activity, being able to survive periods of low energy availability (winter) is an evolutionary advantage.
waheoo 6y ago
Probably. The why we sleep book made me think of this hypothesis. He states that dreaming likely came before consciousness too which I found interesting. As in, our early brains form reality using the same concept as dreaming.

Symmetry 6y ago

1) REM sleep is associated learning new skills. We can teach experimental subjects a new skill in the laboratory, selectively interrupt their REM sleep, and see that their skill doesn't increase to the same extent as a control group who don't have that phase interrupted. The same isn't true with non-REM sleep. We don't really understand the mechanism though and this potentially does bear directly on the question. 2) Well, it would get in the way of actually living? If you're talking down some stairs and then your brain's motor cortex starts working on consolidating a skill and you fall you'd hurt yourself. 3) I don't think we know that. Possibly we had to sleep for memory related reasons and our bodies just evolved to use that time for other sorts of important housekeeping when it wasn't moving around doing stuff? 4) Learning is very important and takes time. In addition to the procedural memory consolidation in REM sleep we also move long term memory to a more stable form of storage in other phases. But neural nets don't really have anything analogous to a brain's explicit memory so this doesn't really bare on that.

kthejoker2 6y ago
#3: Doesn't hibernation suggest the reverse? Sleep is primarily an energy conserving activity, being able to survive periods of low energy availability (winter) is an evolutionary advantage.

waheoo 6y ago

Probably. The why we sleep book made me think of this hypothesis. He states that dreaming likely came before consciousness too which I found interesting. As in, our early brains form reality using the same concept as dreaming.