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Brain-cleaning sleeping cap gets US Army funding
- krylon 5y agoThe title is somewhat misleading, I think. Nevertheless, this sounds like very interesting research. It is astonishing how much we have learned about the brain and how it works, but there so much to learn I doubt we will ever run out of questions to ask.
- kiba 5y agoIs it? With physics, we haven't uncovered anything new that would lead to whole new technologies.
- GeorgeTirebiter 5y agoExcept... we cannot predict how future folks will be able to use e.g. neutrinos to achieve some fantastic future tech. And apart from the sheer desire to 'understand the world', physics research is giving future technologists some phenomena to (possibly) exploit.
- drdeca 5y agoI'm skeptical that future technologies will have much use for neutrinos specifically. Facts discovered via the study of neutrinos, that seems quite plausible, but I doubt there will ever be much use for neutrinos directly.
- rsynnott 5y agoWell, if you want _really_ low latency comms with somewhere approximately on the other side of the world, all you need is a very big particle accelerator, and a neutrino detector :) (or two of each, really). I'm sure the high frequency trading people would love it...
- amelius 5y agoThat would only speed it up by a factor of pi/2.
- rsynnott 5y agoAssuming a shortest possible fibre optic cable with 1c transmission speed (neither are particularly realistic). But yeah, I’m mostly joking. Tho you never know with the HFT people.
- sitkack 5y agoIt would also require no infrastructure between the emitter and the detector. Right now we lay little glass waveguides all over the seafloor to accomplish this, or put satellites in geo synchronous orbit and suffer the latency. Neutrino comms would be civilization transforming.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Neutrino comms would be civilization transforming. Not, like, even 1% as much as the rest of the consequences of the breakthroughs in practical physics necessary for them would be, I suspect.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoWhat? Like half of all modern tech is built out of weird physics. Photoelectric effect, liquid crystals, transistors, most camera improvements, capacitive touch - all applications of discoveries in physics.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- antifa 5y agoThere's still a lot to learn in materials science, plus the gap between "well technically" in a lab vs "well actually" in a factory.
- Sosh101 5y agoIn what way is it misleading?
- joombaga 5y ago> Brain-cleaning sleeping cap gets US Army funding I was lead to believe a "brain-cleaning sleeping cap" already exists. It does not. Add "research" after "cap" (or prefix with "Research into" and I would not be lead to believe it already exists.
- antegamisou 5y agoYou sure you didn't mean to say > It is astonishing how little we have learned about the brain and how it works ?
- krylon 5y agoYou are correct. Silly me! Thanks for pointing that out!
- ARandomerDude 5y agoHeadlines from 2055: Ransomware gang releases man from MyBrain sleeping cap after family pays $10M CEO: users can opt-out of dream-based ads, monitoring -- but face degraded platform experience Police use bulk collection of brain data for secretive warrants
- ptr2voidStar 5y agoWhy can't people see this happening? The ability for most of humanity to be distracted by "shiny things" never ceases to amaze me.
- sneak 5y agoI would prefer this to the current situation where the sponsor of the development is doing so in an effort to increase the effectiveness of its staff to commit mass murder under adverse conditions. Pathological profit-based motivation is vastly preferable to pathological death-based motivation.
- Apocryphon 5y ago"That's why the military developed dream sharing - a training program where soldiers could strangle, stab and shoot each other, then wake up."
- Goety 5y agoMyBrain gang accused of colluding with food providers to induce dementia and alzheimers
- mithusingh32 5y agoThis reminds of that episode from Futurama where Fry has a nightmare but was actually an ad for underwear.
- soylentcola 5y agoLightspeed Briefs? (which, incidentally, I always took to be a pun on Fruit of The Loom underwear abbreviating their brand as FTL (Faster Than Light in common scifi discussions)).
- ex3xu 5y agoFDA approval for transcranial electric/magnetic stimulation has been around since 2008 for major depression, 2013 for migraines, and 2018 for OCD [0], so it wouldn't surprise me if they hold some therapeutic value for sleep disorders as well. I just hope these devices are particularly well-regulated for sleep, however, because I imagine sending the wrong signal for even a few nights' sleep could do some serious damage. [0] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-permits-marketing-transcranial-magnetic-stimulation-treatment-obsessive-compulsive-disorder https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-perm...
- rapjr9 5y agoThat sounds kind of like Havana Syndrome.
- elric 5y agoIs there any evidence that neuromodulation can actually impact the glymphatic system and stimulate the flow of fluids? Do we know how the glymphatic system works in enough detail yet? This sounds like a useful research tool full of interesting sensors. But referring to it as "brain cleaning" strikes me as premature.
- Jensson 5y agoIsn't the point that they fund it because they think it might be able to perform "brain cleaning"? If that is the intent then the title that they fund a "brain cleaning" cap is accurate, it might never work though.
- crooked-v 5y agoI have to wonder how much of this support is the military trying to find a technological workaround so they can keep using schedules that intentionally leave everyone sleep deprived all the time, instead of just adjusting those schedules to let people get enough sleep. While the worst cases of that are generally in the Navy (for example, entire ship crews running on 4 hours of a sleep a night as standard practice, serving as a major factor in those lethal collisions back in 2017), it's pretty common for Army grunts to get six hours of sleep a night or less while on deployment.
- uh_uh 5y agoWhy do they do this?
- Spooky23 5y ago3 additional man hours daily either reduces Manpower needs by 15-20% or makes them more productive. A marginal hour of a soldiers time is free.
- __john 5y agoPoor time management, there's a lot of "hurry up and wait" and "if you're not 15 mins early, you're not on time" in the military.
- jimmygrapes 5y agoThe 15 minute early thing compounds as well: each level of supervision expects their people to show 15min early for a variety of reasons; at the lowest levels it's to take roll and address absences ("send someone to go wake up Smith, NOW!") and to brief individual or small group* responsibilities abd/or meet up points, and might even include travel to an intermediary or ultimate rallying point which itself has a 15 minute early policy. And from there it continues. 15 minutes for each subgroup to arrive at and find their place in the bigger group, repeat until everyone is gathered. Could end up being hours early as an individual in order to account for this. In the end it's nothing really important and your day was "wasted" (cue separate discussion regarding "your" time in a military). * group meaning a collection of people, not the occasionally-used military "Group"
- foota 5y agoImagine if we could largely eliminate sleep, it seems like science fiction for now, but what if?
- tablespoon 5y ago> Imagine if we could largely eliminate sleep, it seems like science fiction for now, but what if? Our employers would suddenly expect us to spend that time working for them. More realistically: it wouldn't be sudden, but we'd still get to the same result eventually, maybe in a couple decades.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoHighly doubt it. Historically, working time has gone down, not up. https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours#working-hours-per-worker-have-declined-after-the-industrial-revolution https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours#working-hours-per-w... I see no reason why longer days would reverse the trend. Most countries have legal limits on hours/week, and these would have to be raised, which would be immensely unpopular.
- heavyset_go 5y agoThe industrial revolution was an aberration when it comes to how many hours people worked. For example, prior to the industrial revolution, people worked roughly 1,440 hours a year[1]. During the industrial revolution, that shot up past 3,200 hours of working a year. Today, in the US, the number of hours worked per year has stayed relatively stable since the 1970's. People work about 1,800 hours a year which, while lower than during the industrial revolution, is still more than people historically did in the past. [1] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoSupply and demand suggest that, laws permitting, the new time per day would be split, some of it going to the workplace and the rest not. That would be entirely due to a labor supply shift, i.e a rise in workwrs' willingness to provide hours. If supply somehow did not rise, there would be no change in hours worked, as employers' demand for labor (which is equivalent to the money they expect to earn by employing someone for another hour) would be unchanged by the new tech.
- pedalpete 5y agoPart of the "brain cleaning" they are talking about is the clearing of amyloid plaques, which occurs during Slow-Wave Oscillations (SWOs) during N3/N4 sleep. There has already been great research in this area, so I wish they would describe what else they are doing. We're stimulating SWOs at our start-up https://soundmind.co https://soundmind.co in order to improve sleep performance - links to research are on our "how it works" page.
- solarengineer 5y agoI've signed up! I just read the Oxford paper that you linked to. It appears to me that your approach is different from that of Dreem who used to provide "pink noise" via their headband.
- pedalpete 5y agoI'm not sure it is different. I've always found Dreem really unclear about what stim they are using, and I've heard that stim has only been available in some regions, etc etc. Doesn't really matter, as it appears they are mostly out of the market now.
- saltyfamiliar 5y agoThis is a very exciting project. Any chance you can tell us how far along everything is?
- pedalpete 5y agoThanks. We've got prototypes built and are measuring sleep state and stimulating SWOs. We've got an industrial design firm working on fit/comfort and helping us move to design for manufacture. We've got a bunch of stuff we're not talking about yet re: our GTM, but we're moving as fast as we can. :) Does that answer your question?
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoThere are few trigger words I detest more than “warfighters” to refer to what we already have a word for- soldier.
- myfartsarefoul 5y agoDon’t forget ‘houseless’ or ‘transient’ to describe homeless. Or ‘bodies with vaginas’ to describe women. Or ‘latinx’ to describe latinos. Pretty sure all of these are exonyms. The linguistic contortions we have to perform to describe things we already had perfectly acceptable words for is absurd and rarely serves the person or thing being described.
- dTal 5y agoAs I understand it, "people with <x> genitalia" is a trans-accepting way of discussing medical issues without rejecting anyone's gender identification. Having a vagina is no longer considered necessary or sufficient to be called a "woman".
- myfartsarefoul 5y agoA pretty simple solution to this is to call trans women ‘trans women’. Or just ‘men’. Since they’re male.
- myfartsarefoul 5y agoFunny how calling women ‘bodies with vaginas’ or ‘menstrators’ isn’t considered offensive, while calling all males ‘men’ will get you fired and potentially in legal trouble. People have lost their damned minds.
- true_religion 5y agoI’m not the OP, but I think we deeply erred by conflating gender and biological sex characteristics into a single word. Unfortunately, the solution to retain men/women for gender and use more specific terminology for sex is problematic. - There’s a greater argument to be made for binary biological sex, and you can attach obvious descriptions to it to make the two categories distinct. - Gender on the other hand is more fluid (both historically in its expression, and in between cultures). - Biological based terminology can be used historically (e.g. Women’s History) But this is all off topic, so I’ll stop here.
- gene-h 5y agoWhen one thinks of making 'supersoldiers' the first thing that comes to mind is making soldiers physically stronger, but in modern warfare this offers little benefit. However, decreasing the need for sleep offers a huge benefit according to JASON scientific advisory council[0]. Part of this is that modern warfare doctrine is built around exhausting the enemy. The JASON report stated that "At present there is no clear path to a major breakthrough in [sleep management], but if such a development occurs... it could seriously alter the balance of engagement." Now that we're starting to at least understand the reason why we sleep, we're may be getting close to said breakthrough. It is quite something to see that the Army rather than DARPA is working on this project. DARPA works on crazy ideas to see if they work at all, the Army Research Labs only tend to work on things that aren't that crazy. [0]https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod/jason/human.pdf https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod/jason/human.pdf
- 0xdeadb00f 5y agoThere was an x-files episode about how the military had succeeded in making sleepless soldiers, but it was irreversible. The soldiers suffered and longed for death when they came back to the US. In traditional X-files fashion one of them had gained psychic powers. It's a good episode.
- dTal 5y ago>modern warfare doctrine is built around exhausting the enemy. If true, this would appear to render the military practice of keeping everyone seriously sleep deprived at all times a bit of a strategic cock-up, wouldn't it?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 8eye 5y agokinda terrifying to be completely honest.
- webmaven 5y agoLinda Nagata's The Red Trilogy Series (an excellent read, IMO) explores some of the consequences of technologies that help manage a person's brain-state in extreme environments (sleep deprivation, trauma, PTSD, etc.): https://g.co/kgs/HK1KoT https://g.co/kgs/HK1KoT