3 ms·

> Sleep is critical to human functioning, and yet, we sleep fewer total hours than any other ape, and are still arguably the most evolutionarily successful of t

> Sleep is critical to human functioning, and yet, we sleep fewer total hours than any other ape, and are still arguably the most evolutionarily successful of the primates > humans are weird outliers—we’re the shortest sleeping primates, yet we pack in the most REM sleep relative to this short duration Isn't that sort of the point? Sleep is a detrimental necessity and the more efficient an organism is in needing less of it, the more effective it can be because it simply has more time to get ahead of the others? It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious, the benefits when hunting other animals that need sleep would be enormous, so there has to be significant evolutionary push for it. I suppose the single hemisphere sleep some marine mammals do is part of the way there, but it is at most a lazy workaround. Practically all other organs have evolved to run 24/7 for up to a century without a single break, what makes brains so universally different?

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
salawat 2mo ago
The fact they electrically signal via chemical analogs fuelled by immersion in nutrient bearing fluid that also accretes waste products, yet is kept separate from the primary loop of the cardiovascular system by the blood-brain barrier?
- dotancohen 2mo ago
  But why is that fundamentally different from the technobabble description of any other vital organ?
  - salawat 2mo ago
    Life has a surprising amount of detail, and if you're only curious enough to interact with the answer as 'technobabble', this does not speak well of your genuine curiosity on the subject. However, in general... Form is shaped by function. The liver/pancreas are designed to handle the production of detoxifying/neutralizing agents that may in and of themselves kill nearby tissue, resulting in the propensity for notable regenerative capabilities. Kidneys/intestines are high surface area to provide more room for the physical processes driving selective permeability to occur, as well as habitable spaces for beneficial microbial symbiotes that aid in digestion. Skeletal/smooth cardiac muscles are optimized for energy burning to facilitate movement. Tendons/cartilaginous membranes are optimized for lubricating joints/connective tissue purposes. Tissues like the thalamus and tonsils, are there for immunity modulation and detection. Neural tissue however is all about signal propagation, and creating shifting networks of continuity that encode information and patterns, the tissue itself is just the medium, and that medium requires some process to clean out or reset the gradients in the synaptic gap. Otherwise, electrical charges cannot be consistently conveyed as flows of ions, actuated by releases of neurotransmitters into the bridge of the synaptic gap. The other constraint unique to neural tissue as well is it isn't motile, or capable of physical movement. All it can do is carry charge by a process of chemically modulated action potential building, yet also needs to have a means to carry out adjusting it's environment which coincidentally, tends to be filled with ions. Ions + coordinated patterns of charge propagation creates effective pumping infrastructure capable of creating overall fluid movement without the help of direct cardiovascular pressure, which can also facilitate the movement of non-charged molecules given sufficient ionic movement to disturb the neutral medium. However, this coordinated firing pattern to create overall ion flow isn't "information encoding to the cognitive process at hand" per se. It's just a bunch of cells getting fluid to move to get waste products to another location to get handled. None of those "knows" anything more than it's immediate environs, but based on things like quorum signalling in biofilms, it isn't outside the realm of possibility, that neural tissue has a completely chemically mediated process by which it knows "gradient blah can be shifted if everyone around me fires", and that given sufficient time and scope, you get an emergent quorum signalling based metabolic progress that selectively induces "coordinated garbage" from the information processing point of view, but very much not biologically/physically garbage point of view, in that that firing pattern clears the chalkboard so to speak for further processing. So to answer your question: why do nerves seemingly need to stop what we want them to do (full time cogitation as directed by an emergent consciousness that their physical processes collectively facilitates)? The answer comes down to homeostatic maintenance, and work the tissue has to do because that's how it evolved. You use the same bunch of neurons, they fill the immediate space with metabolic waste products which makes further firing or usage more difficult until the waste products can be cleared. How do you clear them? Stop doing what you're doing & ion pumpas a group. Coordinated ion pumping isn't driving the pattern recognition/consciousness engine in ways that make any sense, it's just cycling fluid to refresh the operating environment to restore the substrate for unburdened cognition again. Eukaryotic organisms are hard, maddeningly complex, and contain an astonishing amount of detail for something that for whatever reason, usually just seems to work. Could write volumes on these things for how deep the rabbit holes go.
    - dotancohen 2mo ago
      I very much appreciate you engaging me with such an informative reply! I actually would love to read volumes in that style - yet I've never seen that style applied to biology before.
  - IAmBroom 2mo ago
    Factuality and verifiability.
exceptione 2mo ago
> It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious Great point. Afaik, our bodies do preserve energy when we sleep/rest. A few questions that needs to answered first: - will gains of 24/7 hunting/foraging offset the extra energy costs? Lions sleep 16-20 hours a day, according to the internet. - do continuous maintenance systems imply duplicate systems? If so, I have a hunch that even a mere 40% increase in energy expenditure would quickly undo the gains in waking hours.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
aqme28 2mo ago
> It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious, the benefits when hunting other animals that need sleep would be enormous, so there has to be significant evolutionary push for it. I disagree. Endurance hunters walk an animal down throughout a single day. Sleep isn't the bottleneck. Efficient bipedalism and sweat are enough.
zorrocangrejero 2mo ago
There's a similar mechanism called USWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep (Half of the brain remains awake while the other sleeps, not an expert so please correct if wrong)
- sd9 2mo ago
  Unihemispheric sleep has been used by cults for mind control because it puts you in a vulnerable mental state (for example https://zizians.info/#unihemispheric-sleep https://zizians.info/#unihemispheric-sleep). So anybody reading this and interested in trying it, ensure you’ve done sufficient research first.
IAmBroom 2mo ago
> It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious, the benefits when hunting other animals that need sleep would be enormous, so there has to be significant evolutionary push for it. This is actually quite a conundrum. Animals as simple as flies have been observed sleeping (diminished brain activity while resting). It is highly conserved, so it must be incredibly important.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

salawat 2mo ago

The fact they electrically signal via chemical analogs fuelled by immersion in nutrient bearing fluid that also accretes waste products, yet is kept separate from the primary loop of the cardiovascular system by the blood-brain barrier?

dotancohen 2mo ago
But why is that fundamentally different from the technobabble description of any other vital organ?
- salawat 2mo ago
  Life has a surprising amount of detail, and if you're only curious enough to interact with the answer as 'technobabble', this does not speak well of your genuine curiosity on the subject. However, in general... Form is shaped by function. The liver/pancreas are designed to handle the production of detoxifying/neutralizing agents that may in and of themselves kill nearby tissue, resulting in the propensity for notable regenerative capabilities. Kidneys/intestines are high surface area to provide more room for the physical processes driving selective permeability to occur, as well as habitable spaces for beneficial microbial symbiotes that aid in digestion. Skeletal/smooth cardiac muscles are optimized for energy burning to facilitate movement. Tendons/cartilaginous membranes are optimized for lubricating joints/connective tissue purposes. Tissues like the thalamus and tonsils, are there for immunity modulation and detection. Neural tissue however is all about signal propagation, and creating shifting networks of continuity that encode information and patterns, the tissue itself is just the medium, and that medium requires some process to clean out or reset the gradients in the synaptic gap. Otherwise, electrical charges cannot be consistently conveyed as flows of ions, actuated by releases of neurotransmitters into the bridge of the synaptic gap. The other constraint unique to neural tissue as well is it isn't motile, or capable of physical movement. All it can do is carry charge by a process of chemically modulated action potential building, yet also needs to have a means to carry out adjusting it's environment which coincidentally, tends to be filled with ions. Ions + coordinated patterns of charge propagation creates effective pumping infrastructure capable of creating overall fluid movement without the help of direct cardiovascular pressure, which can also facilitate the movement of non-charged molecules given sufficient ionic movement to disturb the neutral medium. However, this coordinated firing pattern to create overall ion flow isn't "information encoding to the cognitive process at hand" per se. It's just a bunch of cells getting fluid to move to get waste products to another location to get handled. None of those "knows" anything more than it's immediate environs, but based on things like quorum signalling in biofilms, it isn't outside the realm of possibility, that neural tissue has a completely chemically mediated process by which it knows "gradient blah can be shifted if everyone around me fires", and that given sufficient time and scope, you get an emergent quorum signalling based metabolic progress that selectively induces "coordinated garbage" from the information processing point of view, but very much not biologically/physically garbage point of view, in that that firing pattern clears the chalkboard so to speak for further processing. So to answer your question: why do nerves seemingly need to stop what we want them to do (full time cogitation as directed by an emergent consciousness that their physical processes collectively facilitates)? The answer comes down to homeostatic maintenance, and work the tissue has to do because that's how it evolved. You use the same bunch of neurons, they fill the immediate space with metabolic waste products which makes further firing or usage more difficult until the waste products can be cleared. How do you clear them? Stop doing what you're doing & ion pumpas a group. Coordinated ion pumping isn't driving the pattern recognition/consciousness engine in ways that make any sense, it's just cycling fluid to refresh the operating environment to restore the substrate for unburdened cognition again. Eukaryotic organisms are hard, maddeningly complex, and contain an astonishing amount of detail for something that for whatever reason, usually just seems to work. Could write volumes on these things for how deep the rabbit holes go.
  - dotancohen 2mo ago
    I very much appreciate you engaging me with such an informative reply! I actually would love to read volumes in that style - yet I've never seen that style applied to biology before.
- IAmBroom 2mo ago
  Factuality and verifiability.

exceptione 2mo ago

> It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious Great point. Afaik, our bodies do preserve energy when we sleep/rest. A few questions that needs to answered first: - will gains of 24/7 hunting/foraging offset the extra energy costs? Lions sleep 16-20 hours a day, according to the internet. - do continuous maintenance systems imply duplicate systems? If so, I have a hunch that even a mere 40% increase in energy expenditure would quickly undo the gains in waking hours.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

aqme28 2mo ago

> It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious, the benefits when hunting other animals that need sleep would be enormous, so there has to be significant evolutionary push for it. I disagree. Endurance hunters walk an animal down throughout a single day. Sleep isn't the bottleneck. Efficient bipedalism and sweat are enough.

zorrocangrejero 2mo ago

There's a similar mechanism called USWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep (Half of the brain remains awake while the other sleeps, not an expert so please correct if wrong)

sd9 2mo ago
Unihemispheric sleep has been used by cults for mind control because it puts you in a vulnerable mental state (for example https://zizians.info/#unihemispheric-sleep https://zizians.info/#unihemispheric-sleep). So anybody reading this and interested in trying it, ensure you’ve done sufficient research first.

IAmBroom 2mo ago

> It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious, the benefits when hunting other animals that need sleep would be enormous, so there has to be significant evolutionary push for it. This is actually quite a conundrum. Animals as simple as flies have been observed sleeping (diminished brain activity while resting). It is highly conserved, so it must be incredibly important.