5 ms·

Its not just short breaks. Effect of a good night's sleep are almost magical in this respect. Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker is filled with examples on how sle

by sidm83 5y ago

Its not just short breaks. Effect of a good night's sleep are almost magical in this respect. Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker is filled with examples on how sleep plays an outsized role in our lives. One relevant example from the book that comes to mind is an experiment where they instructed some college students to type out a particular sequence of characters on a keyboard and then measured their performance across two days. The group which had a good night's sleep had dramatic improvement in their typing coordination overnight. Apparently the author got an insight to pursue deeper into cognitive effects of sleep after a chance encounter with a pianist after a speech he gave on benefits of sleep, where the pianist told him how he struggled with new compositions on evenings and then magically gets them right after a good night's sleep.

slver 5y ago
I can list a bunch of trivial reasons why we sleep, about memory and so on. I can also give trivial explanations like "it's because you're tired and you get rest". But I wonder if anyone has explained why typing coordination would be worse without sleep. This is a mechanical task where analytical thinking and so on are not involved, just simple motor memory patterns.
- chayleaf 5y ago
  Playing piano doesn't require analytical thinking either. Motor memory is just another set of patterns, and rest helps establish the patterns in our mind.
  - slver 5y ago
    I feel we need to flesh that out more. Because if we just say sleep establishes the patterns, it's almost as if we say a pianist who has been playing for decades forgets how to be a pianist without a day of sleep, and then while sleeping he remembers how to be a pianist. I feel I need a more detailed explanation here. Apparently something gets depleted from the brain during the day, that we get back during sleep. Maybe it's structural, not chemical, but something gets depleted.
    - monsieurbanana 5y ago
      In the aforementioned anecdote, the pianist was struggling with a new composition, not general piano skills. Which would make sleep a catalyst for making new neural pathways for that specific composition, not how to be a pianist in general. That's my take as a layman.
      - ehnto 5y ago
        Learning a new piece usually requires learning novel movements, stuff you've never done before. Maybe you've played a C major before, but you don't always use the same fingers depending on where you're coming from and where you're going, maybe the cadence or intensity is different, and so on.
        slver 5y ago
        Still, I can witness myself if I haven't slept well not only my ability to figure out complex programming code suffers, but the mere ability to type fast without a ton of typos. Otherwise I agree after sleep, what we learn seems more readily available.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I'm not sure that's entirely true. There are many ways to approach playing piano, although they all require muscle memory there's a huge cognitive portion to improvisation for example. Some do that by feel, and some do that by actively thinking about the theory they're playing.
- drited 5y ago
  The book Brain Rules by John Medina is worth checking out for some suggestions on possible answers. I don't think science has definitive answers yet but if I remember correctly it's thought that the circuits involved in what the brain learned during the day are active during certain sleep stages which helps with consolidation of memory due to strengthening of connections involved. It's 10 years since I've read into this but I think the biology involved was that oligodendrocytes lay down thicker myelin on axons that are active, resulting in faster/stronger connections in the circuits involved. There's also inhibitory actions of established networks which have to be overcome by new circuits which takes sustained 'attack' over time. If the inhibition didn't happen the previously learned activities would turn noisy very quickly so there's a tradeoff between learning speed and maintenance of high fidelity signal for existing pathways in the brain. I guess the brain has evolved to accept new networks from actions that are repeated and thought about repeatedly because these generally are important whereas stuff that is thought about only once probably isn't.
raducu 5y ago
Do you happen to know what good sleep means? I've done polysomnography and they told me nothing except I don't have sleep apnea, and got a lot of microawakenings -- to me it felt I didn't sleep at all with all the wires and noise by other patients in other rooms snoring, nurse re-attaching wires, nurse walking on hallways to check on other patients and so on. My smartwatch tells me I spend 60% in light sleep, 20% in REM and 20% in deep sleep, but I get very little continous deep sleep.
- ehnto 5y ago
  I struggle a bit with perception of how much I've slept. It can often feel like I've been awake the entire night, aware, thinking, I swear I must dream of lying in bed awake.
- tiku 5y ago
  Plus not sleeping in your own bed/room also has an effect..
- dec0dedab0de 5y ago
  Good sleep means waking up without an alarm refreshed and ready to face the world. Good sleep means waking up with less physical pain then when you lied down. Good sleep usually means there was a vivid, but unimportant, dream. Good sleep means I stayed on my back the whole night, and woke up in the same position I went to sleep in. YMMV Of course
  - seedboot 5y ago
    TIL I don't get good sleep
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - raducu 5y ago
    I can't sleep on my back and I usually toss and turn all night and when I wake up, I feel like I need just 3 more hours of sleep. My mileage does value indeed :))
kevinkeller 5y ago
I too read Why We Sleep, and found it quite interesting. Then I found out that there is some controversy regarding its claims. Previous discussions on HN: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26684519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26684519 TBH I haven't made up my mind about the book yet, just thought you should know about these things too.
- float4 5y ago
  People complain about his book a lot, as is their right, but the finger tapping experiment was actually conducted by Walker's team and the scientific paper[0] has been cited over 500 times. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC202318/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC202318/
- sidm83 5y ago
  I found these critiques soon after reading the book. However, there are many other researches cited in the book and I would take them on face value for the not very scientific but somewhat valid (for me) reason of personal experience. I got into the habit of all night slogs right since high school and it persisted till recently due to the pressure of sticking to deadlines. So I could relate well to several experiments cited in the book. Considering we do not know nearly as much as we ought to know yet, I would rather err on the side of caution and give far more importance to sleep than I have previously.
rroblak 5y ago
The article specifically mentions a previous study that showed that gains from short rests were greater than those from sleep: > In a previous study, led by former NIH postdoctoral fellow Marlene Bönstrup, M.D., Dr. Cohen’s team showed that most of these gains happened during short rests, and not when the subjects were typing. Moreover, the gains were greater than those made after a night’s sleep and were correlated with a decrease in the size of brain waves, called beta rhythms.

by sidm83 5y ago

slver 5y ago

I can list a bunch of trivial reasons why we sleep, about memory and so on. I can also give trivial explanations like "it's because you're tired and you get rest". But I wonder if anyone has explained why typing coordination would be worse without sleep. This is a mechanical task where analytical thinking and so on are not involved, just simple motor memory patterns.

chayleaf 5y ago
Playing piano doesn't require analytical thinking either. Motor memory is just another set of patterns, and rest helps establish the patterns in our mind.
- slver 5y ago
  I feel we need to flesh that out more. Because if we just say sleep establishes the patterns, it's almost as if we say a pianist who has been playing for decades forgets how to be a pianist without a day of sleep, and then while sleeping he remembers how to be a pianist. I feel I need a more detailed explanation here. Apparently something gets depleted from the brain during the day, that we get back during sleep. Maybe it's structural, not chemical, but something gets depleted.
  - monsieurbanana 5y ago
    In the aforementioned anecdote, the pianist was struggling with a new composition, not general piano skills. Which would make sleep a catalyst for making new neural pathways for that specific composition, not how to be a pianist in general. That's my take as a layman.
    - ehnto 5y ago
      Learning a new piece usually requires learning novel movements, stuff you've never done before. Maybe you've played a C major before, but you don't always use the same fingers depending on where you're coming from and where you're going, maybe the cadence or intensity is different, and so on.
      - slver 5y ago
        Still, I can witness myself if I haven't slept well not only my ability to figure out complex programming code suffers, but the mere ability to type fast without a ton of typos. Otherwise I agree after sleep, what we learn seems more readily available.
- ehnto 5y ago
  I'm not sure that's entirely true. There are many ways to approach playing piano, although they all require muscle memory there's a huge cognitive portion to improvisation for example. Some do that by feel, and some do that by actively thinking about the theory they're playing.
drited 5y ago
The book Brain Rules by John Medina is worth checking out for some suggestions on possible answers. I don't think science has definitive answers yet but if I remember correctly it's thought that the circuits involved in what the brain learned during the day are active during certain sleep stages which helps with consolidation of memory due to strengthening of connections involved. It's 10 years since I've read into this but I think the biology involved was that oligodendrocytes lay down thicker myelin on axons that are active, resulting in faster/stronger connections in the circuits involved. There's also inhibitory actions of established networks which have to be overcome by new circuits which takes sustained 'attack' over time. If the inhibition didn't happen the previously learned activities would turn noisy very quickly so there's a tradeoff between learning speed and maintenance of high fidelity signal for existing pathways in the brain. I guess the brain has evolved to accept new networks from actions that are repeated and thought about repeatedly because these generally are important whereas stuff that is thought about only once probably isn't.

raducu 5y ago

Do you happen to know what good sleep means? I've done polysomnography and they told me nothing except I don't have sleep apnea, and got a lot of microawakenings -- to me it felt I didn't sleep at all with all the wires and noise by other patients in other rooms snoring, nurse re-attaching wires, nurse walking on hallways to check on other patients and so on. My smartwatch tells me I spend 60% in light sleep, 20% in REM and 20% in deep sleep, but I get very little continous deep sleep.

ehnto 5y ago
I struggle a bit with perception of how much I've slept. It can often feel like I've been awake the entire night, aware, thinking, I swear I must dream of lying in bed awake.
tiku 5y ago
Plus not sleeping in your own bed/room also has an effect..
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
Good sleep means waking up without an alarm refreshed and ready to face the world. Good sleep means waking up with less physical pain then when you lied down. Good sleep usually means there was a vivid, but unimportant, dream. Good sleep means I stayed on my back the whole night, and woke up in the same position I went to sleep in. YMMV Of course
- seedboot 5y ago
  TIL I don't get good sleep
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- raducu 5y ago
  I can't sleep on my back and I usually toss and turn all night and when I wake up, I feel like I need just 3 more hours of sleep. My mileage does value indeed :))

kevinkeller 5y ago

I too read Why We Sleep, and found it quite interesting. Then I found out that there is some controversy regarding its claims. Previous discussions on HN: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26684519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26684519 TBH I haven't made up my mind about the book yet, just thought you should know about these things too.

float4 5y ago
People complain about his book a lot, as is their right, but the finger tapping experiment was actually conducted by Walker's team and the scientific paper[0] has been cited over 500 times. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC202318/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC202318/
sidm83 5y ago
I found these critiques soon after reading the book. However, there are many other researches cited in the book and I would take them on face value for the not very scientific but somewhat valid (for me) reason of personal experience. I got into the habit of all night slogs right since high school and it persisted till recently due to the pressure of sticking to deadlines. So I could relate well to several experiments cited in the book. Considering we do not know nearly as much as we ought to know yet, I would rather err on the side of caution and give far more importance to sleep than I have previously.

rroblak 5y ago

The article specifically mentions a previous study that showed that gains from short rests were greater than those from sleep: > In a previous study, led by former NIH postdoctoral fellow Marlene Bönstrup, M.D., Dr. Cohen’s team showed that most of these gains happened during short rests, and not when the subjects were typing. Moreover, the gains were greater than those made after a night’s sleep and were correlated with a decrease in the size of brain waves, called beta rhythms.