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Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
- sylware 2y agoExtreme Sleep deprived people did hallucinate. Nature may give us some hints to improve "AI" reliability.
- parpfish 2y agoIt was a mistake to use the term “hallucinate” in AI. It’s a decent metaphor but it’s best to avoid terms prone to anthropomorphism.
- moate 2y agoIt was also a mistake calling it "AI".
- parpfish 2y agoShould’ve just gone with calling it Al. Seems friendly and you’ll mistake it for actual AI until you look closer
- bregma 2y agoYou can call it Betty.
- disgruntledphd2 2y agoMaybe only if you're their long last pal though.
- LPisGood 2y agoIt’s less “hallucination” and more “confabulation”
- astrange 2y agoIt's "hallucination" because we got image generation before text generation, but yes this is a better term.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoIt's less "confabulation" than "pattern-based statistical prediction"
- alan-crowe 2y agoI've suggested Runge Spiking as an alternative, non-anthropomorphic metaphor https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43612517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43612517
- nottorp 2y ago> best to avoid terms prone to anthropomorphism Like "understanding" and "thinking"? Or "will change everything"?
- shit_stabber 2y agoRelevant to this, people with a genetic mutation that adversely affects sleep end up developing dementia and dying early: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/25001-fatal-familial-insomnia https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/25001-fatal-f...
- api 2y agoI've wondered if anyone's ever looked at inducing long periods of sleep as an early dementia mitigation.
- airstrike 2y agoI hereby volunteer for this study
- roman_soldier 2y agoI already do that, I need 8 hours of sleep a day..and 10 at night.
- waterhouse 2y agoIf you look carefully, what happens there is prions screwing up your brain, and insomnia seems like more of a consequence than a cause. > The cause of death for people diagnosed with fatal familial insomnia is damage to the brain and nervous system. This damage, caused by prion proteins accumulating in the thalamus, creates symptoms of insomnia and mental deterioration.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoI'm not a neuroscientist, but it's hard to understand why anyone thinks that this mandatory downtime for all animals is just for a special reason. Why wouldn't sleeping be a catch-all window for autonomous maintenance and overall survival? Always take the most likely reason.
- foobarian 2y agoIt seems that given the options of 1) staying awake and active as normal during the night and 2) using the night period to run various maintenance task but without awareness the second option apparently turned out to be the winner as far as evolution is concerned. What's interesting to me is how many animals beyond humans do it - so it's not purely tied to the human cognitive functions like higher order thinking etc.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoPlenty of animals are nocturnal, diurnal, or sleep in non-24h windows. Evolution does whatever works.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoI think part of the answer is that our world is just very conducive to hidey-holes. There isn't that much surface area you need to cover in a three-dimensional space to get protection from the elements and other predation, and there's an awful lot of stuff out there (trees, dirt, etc) you could comfortably use to do it.
- Izkata 2y ago3) Some animals can sleep with only half their brain at a time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep
- lizknope 2y ago
- trollbridge 2y agoSome people seem to need a lot less sleep than others with no deleterious health effects. It would be very interesting to find out why.
- lizknope 2y agoI haven't used an alarm clock in 20 years and wake up within the same 5-10 minute window almost every day. I have a friend that will just sleep through multiple alarms. But he can also just fall asleep in 10 minutes on an airplane and I can't sleep at all on a plane. He also takes lots of naps and I never take a nap unless I'm sick. The worst feeling to me is waking up from some external noise. I just feel so groggy afterword. My body will feel better after 5 hours of sleep and I just wake up naturally compared to 5 hours, go back to sleep for 2 hours, and get woken up during the wrong time (middle of REM cycle?) and then I feel tired for the whole day even though I got more sleep.
- morkalork 2y agoWasn't there supposed to be a smart watch out there you could set a window of time you wanted to wake up like "between 6:30 and 7:00" where it would use the sleep tracking to pick the optimal time to wake you up like at the end of a REM cycle? I feel like I must have hallucinated this because I'm wearing a smart watch (fitbit) now and no such feature exists.
- esperent 2y agoIt's an app that uses data from your watch, the name is something like sleep cycle.
- rorytbyrne 2y agoApple Watch does this.
- formerly_proven 2y agoNot ootb-separate app needed?
- john61 2y agoI have just read this book and found it very interesting and helpful: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-Walker/9781501144325 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-...
- netrap 2y agoI've seen this book talked about a lot. However, I also have heard that there is some big holes in the research. Take a look online.
- waterhouse 2y agoThe citation is "Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors": https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kpennell 2y agofwiw, I found the 'the sleep fix' much more helpful
- api 2y agoWhatever sleep does, it's something nature has had a tough time optimizing out despite the extreme vulnerability it creates and the sacrifice of a little under half an organism's waking time. That should tell us it's something incredibly important that's hard to do any other way. Edit: on the other hand... if Earth had two suns and rarely had periods of darkness, you wonder if maybe there would have been more evolutionary pressure to find another way.
- danenania 2y agoSleep is vulnerable, but it also keeps you curled up and hidden somewhere rather than out in the open walking around and taking risks.
- swatcoder 2y agoAlternately, sleep is the optimal ultra-high-efficiency survival state and wakefulness only exists to give creatures enough time to get their affairs in order so that they can safely return to dormancy. It's easy to think of sleep as a compromise to be defeated because we're culturally preoccupied with the achievements and pleasures of wakefulness, but that's really just us claiming personal preference for one narrow part of a holistic system that's just doing its own survival and propagation thing. Consider trees, mushrooms, cicadas, snakes, or cats. Chilling out in low power mode as much is possible is maybe not a error to be fixed so much as it is an outcome of efficient design.
- gpm 2y agoConsider hibernation. Evolution went to great trouble there to maximize the duration that some animals can sleep for - and it's pretty clearly solely designed to save power. Which doesn't mean that's the only thing sleep is good for, evolution doesn't believe in separating concerns, but it's definitely a thing it does.
- throwaway7893 2y agoI think one of our goals is to reduce entropy in the Universe, and being awake lets us do 100x more of that than if we were in low power mode
- EncomLab 2y agoThe generations in my family are full of people who had dementia/Alzheimer's/auto-immune disorders. They all had anxiety, and they all had sleep disorders - I'm certain there is a connection among it all. I joined a Stanford study and had a spinal tap sample submitted for testing - in theory I am "unlikely" to develop anything for the next 20 years - but that only gets me to my late 60's :(
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- genter 2y agoSame, except we also have digestive issues. I'm really hoping a paleo diet and good probiotics will save me. It's already helped me a lot. I'll let you know in 40 years if it prevents me from getting Alzheimer's.
- 0xEF 2y ago[x] Anxiety [x] Sleep apnea [x] Digestive issues [x] Former psychonaut [x] Highly stressed pretty much always due to work I can only hope that whatever brand of dementia I end up with is something akin to Mr Toad's Wild Ride, or whatever. I'd be happy just to go out either laughing or well-rested.
- esafak 2y agoSo you can concentrate your energy on maintenance tasks, like memory consolidation and physical restoration, during the down time during which it is cold and dark -- when you can't effectively hunt and stay warm. If you did not do that, you would have to constantly allocate some energy towards these tasks, at the expense of more urgent ones. And the higher up you are in the food chain, the less risky it is to rest.
- sparsely 2y agoWhich maintenance tasks, why does it require us to be unconscious, why can't we apply constant energy towards them? Lots of interesting questions to answer
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cut3 2y agoMental and physical body process refactoring is my guess
- kridsdale1 2y agoCant run inference on the model while it’s in a new training run.
- euroderf 2y agoQuiet, so as not to attract predators.
- esafak 2y agoLike memory consolidation and physical restoration. My lay understanding is that we are unconscious because we turn our sensors off during deep sleep, and direct energy away from the prefrontal cortex, where reasoning and consciousness reside, to the limbic system, which processes memories and feelings, so that learning can take place.
- Longtemps 2y ago[dead]
- ninetyninenine 2y agoThere’s this one guy in Vietnam who literally doesn’t sleep ever. https://www.news18.com/amp/buzz/meet-80-year-old-vietnamese-thai-ngoc-who-hasnt-slept-in-over-60-years-7053169.html https://www.news18.com/amp/buzz/meet-80-year-old-vietnamese-... Google it. There’s a lot about him. It’s like the one thing that makes zero sense in all this research about sleep.
- privacyking 2y agoHe might have some mutation that means all this housekeeping happens all the time I guess.
- aantix 2y agoWhen I take a supplement with sulforaphane, I feel like I need less sleep. I feel refreshed in the morning. Strange.
- throwaway290 2y agoWe have no understanding of medicine.
- matthest 2y agoYeah, if you think about it in the grand scheme of things, this is true. Our science is fairly reductionist. Nature is incorporating vast amounts of science, most of which we probably don't even know about yet.
- proee 2y agoRunning improved my sleep quality dramatically. Now the problem is, that if I take a day off running, my sleeping suffers. Curious if people that do weight lifting (which I'm considering) get great sleeps? Maybe I can alternate between cardio and weight lifting each day?
- seper8 2y agoFor me it really depends on when - if i go run after 8PM i definitely sleep worse.
- mter 2y agoAny physically tiring activity makes me sleep better. From lifting to running to walking long distances. You should alternate cardio and weight lifting for general health, not just for sleep. The weight training helps with muscle/bone loss as you age
- jwilber 2y agoAnecdotally, I get dramatically better sleep after good cardio. Weightlifting doesn’t seem to have much of an effect.
- 121789 2y agoyes, I alternate and it works fine. in my experience running/heavy cardio sleep > yoga sleep > weight lifting sleep >> no exercise sleep. if that makes sense
- burningChrome 2y agoI play hockey frequently and have the same issue. When we go on vacation, I sleep worse, need to sleep later and longer to feel better. I know that even moderate cardio regulates circadian rhythm and helps with body temperature regulation. Your body's temperature increases during exercise, when you stop and your body temp comes back down, neurologically it tells the body you're now ready for sleep. Exercise also helps regulate melatonin production which affects your sleeping cycles. When I play in really hard, grueling sessions, taking CBD also helps reduce the inflammation in my body and helps me sleep deeper. I also stretch for at least 30-40 mins when I get done which also helps. So it makes sense, once you stop or change your body's cycle, it can affect a lot of other areas of your day-to-day schedule.
- m3kw9 2y agoLikely it also because your other body parts needs repairing, not just the brain and the brain tells you by being sleepy. Evolutionarily, why we don’t go on for 24hrs maybe because we have night time.
- ivraatiems 2y agoTangentially related, but very important to me and hopefully helpful to others here: I have sleep apnea. So do most of the men in my family. Though I am overweight, I haven't always been, but I have always had the condition, as have they. For those who don't know, sleep apnea is a condition where you stop breathing in your sleep, wake up slightly to fix that and start breathing again, and then fall back asleep. It sounds like choking in your sleep. In my case, I was doing this more than 70 times an hour - often multiple times a minute! My blood oxygen was as low as 67% - a threshold that would have me on a ventilator, were it happening in a hospital. Until I got my apnea treated, I never slept well. I had not had a really good night's sleep in years, and I hadn't had a great night's sleep as an adult probably ever. In school - decades ago - I fell asleep in class regularly and napped every day. Despite this, I have been successful, but I can't help but wonder who I'd be if I hadn't had that problem. What's worse, because you do not actually sleep, whatever happens during sleep that repairs your body doesn't really happen. Sleep apnea massively increases your risk for heart disease, stroke, and many other serious conditions. Sleep apnea is treated with CPAP - continuous positive airway pressure - from a machine that sits on your bedside. You wear a mask like Bane and it forces air into your throat and opens it, making it easier to breathe. CPAP is not a cure, because it doesn't fix the underlying anatomical issue, but properly calibrated it results in complete remission. I now sleep normally. From a sleep perspective, I feel amazing, better than I have in years. For the first time in my life, I can rely on feeling good in the morning if I get enough hours of sleep in. Even four hours on the CPAP is better than eight or nine hours without it. (Also, over time, your brain becomes conditioned that CPAP = sleep, and you zonk out within minutes of putting it on.) It is costly and time consuming, yes, and CPAP machines are a huge lifestyle adjustment. But good lord, is it worth it. I have never felt or slept better. In the years since my diagnosis I have not slept a single night without my CPAP and I don't think I ever will again, unless some magical cure comes out. If you have struggled with insomnia, snoring, or feeling wakeful after sleep, I beg you to get a sleep study and look into whether apnea, or another similar condition, could be the cause.
- lxgr 2y agoDo you know if fitness trackers with integrated pulse oximeters can detect sleep apnea? My Apple Watch has an oximeter (I bought it before that feature was pulled in the US), and there's a "sleep apnea notifications" section in the "Health" app, but I'm not sure if the absence of notifications implies an absence of a problem. Would sleep apnea always be visible as a lower blood oxygen level when sleeping, or can there be negative effects even without that?
- mentos 2y agoI saw this post where Andrej Karpathy asks if hyperbaric oxygen therapy might work like exercise by boosting oxygen to tissues, I wonder if sleep has any correlation. https://x.com/karpathy/status/1903586665832321271?s=46 https://x.com/karpathy/status/1903586665832321271?s=46
- leonidasv 2y agoThe periods of my life I was the most productive and learned the most were when those when I managed to sleep >=8 hours every single night, in a dark, silent environment. I still manage to sleep >=7 hours most nights, but I feel like it's getting harder to keep a baseline of 8 hours for every night. Don't know if my sleep needs changed over time due to aging, or if it's just a consequence of having more responsibilities.
- amai 2y ago"In a 2023 study, researchers in Brazil found that fruit flies that were sleep deprived showed overexpression mostly of genes that affected metabolism, glucose, triglyceride and levels of the hormone dopamine" "After just one day of restricting sleep in mice, Rogulja could see fats in the animals’ intestines that weren’t entering circulation. After five days, their guts were filled with fat although their bodies were starved of nutrients." This is interesting. People with Autism and ADHD often have gut issues and problems with dopamine etc. Maybe these deceases are caused by constant sleep deprivation.
- pedalpete 2y agoWe work in the neurotech/sleeptech space, specifically with the stimulation which was VERY poorly described in this article where they discuss "pink noise". They point to one small study in 7 participants, but slow-wave enhancement (increasing slow-wave delta power) has over a decade of research, including 4 recent papers in older adults looking at Alzheimer's both as a preventative measure and as management of symptoms (we can't say treatment yet, that's still many studies away). We provide our technology to researchers, and are preparing our consumer product. You can find more on our website, as well as links to a few of the more relevant studies at https://affectablesleep.com https://affectablesleep.com How I describe the technology is that slow-wave activity is the synchronous firing of neurons, the hallmark and defining feature of deep sleep. We can't create slow-waves, but we can increase the electrical activity, increase the synchronous firing of neurons, which is like giving the glymphatic system an extra boost of power. This enhances the restorative function of the brain, without altering sleep time. I should be completing our whitepaper which provides a more in depth look at the technology, the state of sleep, and a large chronological list of how the research has progressed over the last decade.
- bufferoverflow 2y agoBecause it defragments and cleans the brain.