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Caffeine induces age-dependent brain complexity and criticality during sleep
- justonceokay 1y agoDoes anyone know what a “critical regime” is in regards to neuroscience?
- gdhkgdhkvff 1y agoI was confused when reading the abstract so I ChatGPT’d a summary and it just so happened to include this exact explanation: 1. What does a “critical regime” mean? In neuroscience, a “critical regime” is like a sweet spot between too much order (where the brain is slow and rigid) and too much chaos (where it’s noisy and erratic). In this state: * The brain is highly sensitive to inputs. * It’s capable of flexible responses. * Some researchers think this is ideal for things like learning, memory, and information processing. BUT — that’s during waking states. During sleep, especially NREM sleep, the brain is supposed to be less active so it can: * Consolidate memories, * Clear out waste (literally), * Reset emotional balance, * Rest and repair.
- justonceokay 1y agoThanks for pasting that probably correct definition.
- jacobolus 1y agoI essentially always find it more useful to do a Google Scholar search and skim a highly cited paper vs. asking an LLM. A search for `"critical regime" brain` turns up as result #2 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2012.00163/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.... > Relatively recent work has reported that networks of neurons can produce avalanches of activity whose sizes follow a power law distribution. This suggests that these networks may be operating near a critical point, poised between a phase where activity rapidly dies out and a phase where activity is amplified over time. The hypothesis that the electrical activity of neural networks in the brain is critical is potentially important, as many simulations suggest that information processing functions would be optimized at the critical point. This hypothesis, however, is still controversial. Here we will explain the concept of criticality and review the substantial objections to the criticality hypothesis raised by skeptics. A search for `"critical regime" brain sleep` turns up a review article discussing various studies about criticality in neuroscience, including a section reviewing studies related to sleep, https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neural-circuits/articles/10.3389/fncir.2020.00054/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neural-circuits/article...
- LarsAlereon 1y agoFrom the paper: "Maximal complexity arises in systems that achieve an optimal balance between order and randomness. According to criticality theory, this critical point characterizes the state of maximal computational efficiency and optimal information processing."
- layman51 1y agoI think it just means that a sleeping brain that’s on caffeine is busier and more “complex” than one that isn’t on caffeine. It is confusing, but there’s no way that caffeine doesn’t mess up your sleep quality (for most people).
- 0xTJ 1y agoDid anyone see what the interval from caffeine dose to bedtime was in this experiment? I won't claim to have read every sentence, but I did skim the whole paper, read through the procedure parts, and did a couple key-word searches, but wasn't able to find that figure.
- jnwatson 1y agoI'm stunned that the paper doesn't mention this. I think the paper is simply "caffeine before bedtime is bad for sleep".
- bdbenton5255 1y agoEspecially when you consider that similar studies conclude that caffeine has an overall positive effect on brain function when consumed at 200mg per sitting and 400mg per day. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26677204/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26677204/ 100mg being equivalent to one cup of coffee or two cups of tea. I personally prefer tea as it is milder and the lower caffeine content means I can drink it all day.
- bravoetch 1y agoTea also has l-theanine, and that removes the jitters from consuming a lot of caffeine.
- redtaperat 1y agoAll caffeine consumption stopped at noon. It’s literally in the paper.
- 0xTJ 1y agoThat's the time that the subjects stopped consuming caffeine as part of their usual diet, not the time that the pill (either 200 mg caffeine or a placebo) was administered. The subjects were required to maintain their usual caffeine intake (to prevent withdrawal), but had to stop by noon to prevent that caffeine from interfering with the experiment.
- wild_pointer 1y agoCan somebody eli5? Coffee good or coffee bad?
- pengaru 1y agobad
- candiddevmike 1y agoDE-CA-F... good?
- WhitneyLand 1y agoPaper suggests these changes might actually represent *worse* sleep quality. It says "increased brain entropy during sleep has been linked to hypertension and early-stage Alzheimer's disease" and question whether this represents "a deterioration of sleep quality."
- relyks 1y agoBasically, caffeine is bad for sleep (learning and recovery) if taken late enough and significant amounts remain in your system at bedtime. It does note that even having a coffee first thing in the morning does have a measurable effect on deep sleep brain waves. Fast metabolizers of caffeine might be different. Don't drink coffee in the afternoon is probably the take away for most people
- Loughla 1y agoOld people love coffee late in the day. Grandpa used to wake up at about 2 in the morning to pee, and would have a cup of coffee before going right back to sleep. So maybe the effects nullify after a certain point?
- lolinder 1y agoThat he was able to go back to sleep with caffeine in his system doesn't show anything at all about the quality of that sleep.
- potato3732842 1y agoOld people drink decaf
- temp0826 1y agoI've never been able to fall asleep easily. When I see someone who instantly can, I wonder if they are chronically exhausted from a lifetime of bad sleep. I know it's probably not the case but it kind of makes me jealous.
- m463 1y agoI wonder too. It doesn't say so on the DT page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens But I read something somewhere that alcohol does something that prevents REM or soemthing, and when you stop drinking your sleep-deprived body wants to make up the REM and will even do it while you're awake. don't know for sure EDIT: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2778757/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2778757/ ...supports early theories that the hallucinations of DTs represent an intrusion of REM sleep processes into the waking state (for a review, see Zarcone 1978).
- trylfthsk 1y agoAs much as I like to scientifically validate my drug dependency, is the EEG work here really that much more rigorous than a polygraph? I see a lot of domain specific terms like "FOOOF algorithm", filtering signal spectra etc. and the geist of my schooling asks me whether the elephant is wiggling its trunk.
- aussieguy1234 1y agoI avoid drinking coffee 12 hours before bedtime, because I read from multiple sources this is the time it takes for caffeine to be cleared from the body. For example, if my bed time is 11pm, no coffee later than 11am. It's been working for me so far to prevent caffeine interfering with my sleep.
- b0dhimind 1y agoNot "cleared"... 12 hours is just the half-life. Hence the minor sleep disturbance even with such a delay. However, the benefits of a healthy cup outweigh the negligible sleep brainwave issue especially if properly relaxed.
- vouaobrasil 1y agoJust an anecdote, which is probably meaningless on average but: I've found that caffeine is beneficial to me and I can still gain the benefits of caffeine by drinking very little of it every second or third day. I'm talking about 1-2 sips of a cup of regular coffee. No, it doesn't wake me up like a full cup would, but it allows me to function (especially in feeling stiff in my muscles) a little better without any noticeable downside. Just an anecdote though.
- screye 1y agoWomen metabolize caffeine slower than men. Hormonal birth control slows caffeine absorption down even further. Men can comfortably get away with afternoon espresso in a way that women simply can't. On the bright side, they're less likely to get extreme caffeine crashes for the same reason.
- asdaqopqkq 1y agoMaybe you could sweat out the caffeine.
- flowerthoughts 1y ago> contrasting 200 mg of caffeine against a placebo condition Burried in the middle: > The participants reported moderate caffeine consumption, equivalent to one to three cups of coffee per day. All participants were non-smokers and free of drugs or medicine which could influence the sleep-wake cycle. Subjects also reported no sleep complaints, night work, or transmeridian travel in the 3 months before the recording. > The participants arrived at the laboratory 6–8 h before their habitual sleep time and left 1–1.5 h after habitual wake up time. Bedtime and wake time in the laboratory were determined by averaging each participant’s sleep-wake cycle from the sleep diary. The total dose of caffeine administered was 200 mg (100 mg per capsule) which is considered to be moderate (equivalent to 1–2 cups of coffee) and induces significant changes in the sleep of young subjects23. Two-piece telescopic hard capsules were used, allowing the ingestion of caffeine without oral contamination, in a double-blind cross-over design using stratified randomization. I doubt someone drinking 1-3 cups per day would feel that 200 mg single-shot is "normal." That's 2-3 cups in one go. For me, it would be like drinking it around 3pm. I would fit the cohort. If I take a 200 mg caffeine capsule at 3pm, I get pretty fucked up, and I'm wondering what the self-reported effects were at the time they went to bed. Did they feel normal? It sounds like this is one of those studies that are meant for other researchers, not the public, because the actual evidence is about effects that don't match daily lives. This type of caffine ingestion would be noticeable, and you'd pretty quickly dial it down if it was felt the way I suspect it did feel.
- yoko888 1y ago[dead]
- chneu 1y agoI stopped consuming caffeine and alcohol years ago. My ADHD, depression, anxiety and sleep improved immensely. I don't really miss em. The only times it's a problem is when other people try to get me to consume caffeine/alcohol because people are weird about it. I'd wager a lot of people don't really need caffeine but our society really pushes it on people. It's also a wicked cycle. Once you get to using caffeine regularly it gets very difficult to operate at the same level without it. But yeah, regular exercise, good sleep and a decent diet make it not too bad.
- zingababba 1y agoYeah, being off caffeine is amazing. What's crazy is the realization that 9/10 people you interact with are in some stage of caffeine withdrawal.
- b0dhimind 1y ago200mg caffeine is kind of a lot for me. I've dialed it down to one diluted cup (~80mg) 6 days of the week mixed with MCT, ghee, etc. I've tried bumping it to 200mg and can definitely feel slightly increased alertness late at night, even if I have it before 2pm. Gonna definitely try to have it all by noon now... since half-life is 12 hours and I sleep 10ish...