4 ms·

Does anyone else read the title and only identify ~6/9 of the words in the title here? I've got no clue what this is about before clicking on it.

Separo 2y ago
Only because I heard about it recently. Alternative title: we figured out how the brain gets rid of junk while you sleep.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  Yes, most people can understand the title even if every word isn't familiar. But that's HN these days, dumb jokes about the title and no substance:(
  - tombert 2y ago
    No argument that I'm dumb, but I genuinely had absolutely no idea what the hell the title was saying.
lokimedes 2y ago
Disk defragmentation for wet sponges was my intuitive take.
- binary132 2y ago
  It’s less like defrag and more like uhhhh literally washing out the gunk and metabolic byproducts
nickpsecurity 2y ago
You’re not the only one.
lokimedes 2y ago
Based on the names of the authors, it seems to be in danish.
AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag
kylebenzle 2y ago
Normal human here, when that happens to me I use Google rather than post my question to a forum. But it's ok if you don't know some words, just no need to tell everyone.
knicholes 2y ago
I was exposed to a lot of biology in college, so I understood.
stronglikedan 2y ago
We're obviously not the target audience here.
wnmurphy 2y ago
I recognized the word "glymphatic" from recent articles about the discovery of the brain's self-cleaning system, and then understood from the headline that these authors identified that the mechanism by which this occurs is driven by norepinephrine.
amelius 2y ago
anti-clickbait title
dekhn 2y ago
yes, but after about 30 years of this, your brain will start to create a data structure to represent the claim, and then you can sort of backfill with dictionary lookups. I can trace my entire career to reading a single paper by doing this very tediously (it gets easier; eventually, you build an embedding and every paper is really just another point in hypothesis space). Bio papers (of this type) follow a fairly straightforward pattern: <entity> <affects in some way> <some important system> <under these conditions> in this case norepinephrine is the entity- it's a small molecule the brain uses to transmit information around. It literally floats from one cell to another, and the recipient acts upon it. The effect in this case would be "slow vasomotion"- I ahdn't actually heard of this before, but apparently blood vessels oscillate, independently of normal heartbeat. The important system- again, something I wasn't particularly aware of- is the glymphatic system. Apparently, it's used for garbage cleanup? And the conditions are "during sleep" So basically the garbage gets taken out at night by a little guy.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > I can trace my entire career to reading a single paper by doing this very tediously (it gets easier; eventually, you build an embedding and every paper is really just another point in hypothesis space). Tangential, but it really annoys me how people use computational jargon to represent internal mental processes. These are absolutely terrible metaphors outside of computing and I have no clue what you're referring to. What the hell does "building an embedding" even mean with respect to humans? Yea, I'm sure I encode some embedding inside my brain. I'm also certain this is just a tiny part of the mental processes I rely on.
  - dekhn 2y ago
    Please note that I've worked in both biology and CS for 30+ years. Everything I describe in this way is a simplified approximation of mental processes, and half-joking (mainly appreciated by ML nerds and cognitive neuroscientists, I admit) To build an embedding for a human means to build an approximate map of entities within a metric space. We do this all the time, for example unsupervised clustering of related entities (for example species classification based on visible character states). From what I can tell, the human brain basically has a number of approximate computing systems- we have associative memory (hash tables/dictionary lookups), trajectory interpolation/extrapolation (catching a ball with only a few glances), logical reasoning from a premise (theoretical math), monte carlo tree search (formulating a complex plan wiht multiple steps and some unknowns), etc, etc. I certainly don't propose that my terminology is specifically scientifically correct, it's just heuristics I apply to my own thought patterns.
Aurornis 2y ago
Glymphatic system: Waste clearance system in the brain. More active during sleep. Slow vasomotion: Squeezing and relaxing motion that pumps fluid through glymphatic system Norepinephrine-mediated: Norepinephrine is a signaling chemical. They discovered that norepinephrine is key to the signaling chain that drives slow vasomotion in the glymphatic system during sleep. In short, they found that norepinephrine signaling pulses in a specific system trigger a pumping motion that helps with waste clearance from the brain in sleep. They also found that a sleep medication suppresses that norepinephrine signaling, reducing waste clearance during sleep. As always, be careful interpreting these studies. The amount of medications used in these studies tends to be very high to elicit the desired effect, so we don't know if doses used medicinally in humans cause the same effect or if that effect is significant.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Inject norepinephrine into the brain for good sleep, got it.
  - sgt101 2y ago
    might be a very long, very deep sleep...
    - moffkalast 2y ago
      The very best kind of sleep!
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
As a Gen Xer, the relatively recent discoveries around the purpose of sleep are pretty fascinating to me. Throughout most of my life, we basically didn't know why we need sleep. It's very clear we (and essentially all vertebrates) do need sleep, but we really didn't know why. Now we basically do: sleep is when you clear out waste products in your brain. As someone who definitely doesn't understand all the details, it's when "channels" it your brain get opened up so these waste products can be swept away. This study (based on the title) claims to show the mechanism for doing that: 1. Norepinephrine-mediated: norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter, so this is saying it's responsible for the mechanism of action. 2. slow vasomotion - you can Google what vasomotion means, but it's essentially a rhythmic change it the walls of blood vessels - this is essentially the "sweeping away" part I mentioned above. 3. glymphatic clearance - the glymphatic system in the brain is that network of fluid filled spaces in the brain, and it's what clears away brain waste products, so glymphatic clearance means allowing the glymphatic system to "wash away" those waste products. So, this study claims to explain the mechanism by which waste products get cleared from the brain during sleep, and the larger context is that it is indeed why we need sleep in the first place.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > sleep is when you clear out waste products in your brain. It's unfortunately more complicated than this: we also clear out the same waste products in our brain during wakefulness. Mostly at a higher rate, too. Perhaps there's some unique way in which this happens during sleep but this certainly isn't the "key" (if there is in fact one) to why we need to sleep.
- AbstractH24 2y ago
  Another big learning from this is that "not all sleep is created equal." What happens during NREM isn't the same as what happens during REM. Which surprises me because I thought we were all taught that REM is the best kind of sleep (and the hardest to induce). But also doesn't Ambien reduce the amount of time in REM and increase NREM. I'm confused again. Someone better educated than me care to explain?
  - 2y ago
noveltyaccount 2y ago
I know what "sleep" means!
liveoneggs 2y ago
Click it because norepinephrine-impacting drugs include ADHD and depression meds.

Separo 2y ago

Only because I heard about it recently. Alternative title: we figured out how the brain gets rid of junk while you sleep.

kylebenzle 2y ago
Yes, most people can understand the title even if every word isn't familiar. But that's HN these days, dumb jokes about the title and no substance:(
- tombert 2y ago
  No argument that I'm dumb, but I genuinely had absolutely no idea what the hell the title was saying.

lokimedes 2y ago

Disk defragmentation for wet sponges was my intuitive take.

binary132 2y ago
It’s less like defrag and more like uhhhh literally washing out the gunk and metabolic byproducts

nickpsecurity 2y ago

You’re not the only one.

lokimedes 2y ago

Based on the names of the authors, it seems to be in danish.

AdmiralAsshat 2y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag

kylebenzle 2y ago

Normal human here, when that happens to me I use Google rather than post my question to a forum. But it's ok if you don't know some words, just no need to tell everyone.

knicholes 2y ago

I was exposed to a lot of biology in college, so I understood.

stronglikedan 2y ago

We're obviously not the target audience here.

wnmurphy 2y ago

I recognized the word "glymphatic" from recent articles about the discovery of the brain's self-cleaning system, and then understood from the headline that these authors identified that the mechanism by which this occurs is driven by norepinephrine.

amelius 2y ago

anti-clickbait title

dekhn 2y ago

yes, but after about 30 years of this, your brain will start to create a data structure to represent the claim, and then you can sort of backfill with dictionary lookups. I can trace my entire career to reading a single paper by doing this very tediously (it gets easier; eventually, you build an embedding and every paper is really just another point in hypothesis space). Bio papers (of this type) follow a fairly straightforward pattern: <entity> <affects in some way> <some important system> <under these conditions> in this case norepinephrine is the entity- it's a small molecule the brain uses to transmit information around. It literally floats from one cell to another, and the recipient acts upon it. The effect in this case would be "slow vasomotion"- I ahdn't actually heard of this before, but apparently blood vessels oscillate, independently of normal heartbeat. The important system- again, something I wasn't particularly aware of- is the glymphatic system. Apparently, it's used for garbage cleanup? And the conditions are "during sleep" So basically the garbage gets taken out at night by a little guy.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> I can trace my entire career to reading a single paper by doing this very tediously (it gets easier; eventually, you build an embedding and every paper is really just another point in hypothesis space). Tangential, but it really annoys me how people use computational jargon to represent internal mental processes. These are absolutely terrible metaphors outside of computing and I have no clue what you're referring to. What the hell does "building an embedding" even mean with respect to humans? Yea, I'm sure I encode some embedding inside my brain. I'm also certain this is just a tiny part of the mental processes I rely on.
- dekhn 2y ago
  Please note that I've worked in both biology and CS for 30+ years. Everything I describe in this way is a simplified approximation of mental processes, and half-joking (mainly appreciated by ML nerds and cognitive neuroscientists, I admit) To build an embedding for a human means to build an approximate map of entities within a metric space. We do this all the time, for example unsupervised clustering of related entities (for example species classification based on visible character states). From what I can tell, the human brain basically has a number of approximate computing systems- we have associative memory (hash tables/dictionary lookups), trajectory interpolation/extrapolation (catching a ball with only a few glances), logical reasoning from a premise (theoretical math), monte carlo tree search (formulating a complex plan wiht multiple steps and some unknowns), etc, etc. I certainly don't propose that my terminology is specifically scientifically correct, it's just heuristics I apply to my own thought patterns.

Aurornis 2y ago

Glymphatic system: Waste clearance system in the brain. More active during sleep. Slow vasomotion: Squeezing and relaxing motion that pumps fluid through glymphatic system Norepinephrine-mediated: Norepinephrine is a signaling chemical. They discovered that norepinephrine is key to the signaling chain that drives slow vasomotion in the glymphatic system during sleep. In short, they found that norepinephrine signaling pulses in a specific system trigger a pumping motion that helps with waste clearance from the brain in sleep. They also found that a sleep medication suppresses that norepinephrine signaling, reducing waste clearance during sleep. As always, be careful interpreting these studies. The amount of medications used in these studies tends to be very high to elicit the desired effect, so we don't know if doses used medicinally in humans cause the same effect or if that effect is significant.

moffkalast 2y ago
Inject norepinephrine into the brain for good sleep, got it.
- sgt101 2y ago
  might be a very long, very deep sleep...
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    The very best kind of sleep!

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

As a Gen Xer, the relatively recent discoveries around the purpose of sleep are pretty fascinating to me. Throughout most of my life, we basically didn't know why we need sleep. It's very clear we (and essentially all vertebrates) do need sleep, but we really didn't know why. Now we basically do: sleep is when you clear out waste products in your brain. As someone who definitely doesn't understand all the details, it's when "channels" it your brain get opened up so these waste products can be swept away. This study (based on the title) claims to show the mechanism for doing that: 1. Norepinephrine-mediated: norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter, so this is saying it's responsible for the mechanism of action. 2. slow vasomotion - you can Google what vasomotion means, but it's essentially a rhythmic change it the walls of blood vessels - this is essentially the "sweeping away" part I mentioned above. 3. glymphatic clearance - the glymphatic system in the brain is that network of fluid filled spaces in the brain, and it's what clears away brain waste products, so glymphatic clearance means allowing the glymphatic system to "wash away" those waste products. So, this study claims to explain the mechanism by which waste products get cleared from the brain during sleep, and the larger context is that it is indeed why we need sleep in the first place.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> sleep is when you clear out waste products in your brain. It's unfortunately more complicated than this: we also clear out the same waste products in our brain during wakefulness. Mostly at a higher rate, too. Perhaps there's some unique way in which this happens during sleep but this certainly isn't the "key" (if there is in fact one) to why we need to sleep.
AbstractH24 2y ago
Another big learning from this is that "not all sleep is created equal." What happens during NREM isn't the same as what happens during REM. Which surprises me because I thought we were all taught that REM is the best kind of sleep (and the hardest to induce). But also doesn't Ambien reduce the amount of time in REM and increase NREM. I'm confused again. Someone better educated than me care to explain?
- 2y ago

noveltyaccount 2y ago

I know what "sleep" means!

liveoneggs 2y ago

Click it because norepinephrine-impacting drugs include ADHD and depression meds.