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This seems a little sensationalist. No, the memory role of sleep was not "discovered": a paper proposing a credible theory was published, based on experiments p

This seems a little sensationalist. No, the memory role of sleep was not "discovered": a paper proposing a credible theory was published, based on experiments performed on mice. Moreover, the proposition that is being advanced by the paper --- that specific sleep phases strengthen particular neural connections --- has already been made previously, and is generally suspected to be true in academic circles anyway. So the publication of this paper constitutes nothing more than a few (perhaps important) results supplying a bit of further evidence in favour of an already well-supported hypothesis; that is all.

albertzeyer 12y ago
Do you have some good reference about this hypothesis? I'm not really into neuroscience but this really interests me. I'm more on the machine learning side with artificial neural networks, but I often wondered whether some sleep-like phases could get me some improvements. Of course, the question is, what exactly should happen in that phase. What particular neural connections should I strengthen?
- coldtea 12y ago
  Perhaps it has no analogous to software neural networks? Looks like this "strengthening" is needed because there's actual "matter", "tissue" etc involved.
  - mrexroad 12y ago
    from what i recall (no documentation link, but it's been posted here before) strengthening is more about making associations/connections for the things that are important. so if you have CPU bound batch jobs that run each night for identifying new connections between clusters of data... it seems like it'd be pretty analogous. it's not like things we 'forgot' weren't stored, or somehow dropped from memory; we just couldn't access it when we needed to later, and once reminded we're fully aware. there's also been studies on people who suffer a traumatic experience; if they're deprived sleep following the event then the memories are less severe/traumatic.
deleted 12y ago
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cLeEOGPw 12y ago
By "discovered" I assumed more of like "deepened knowledge of". I guess I'm so accustomed to sensationalist titles by now that I immediately tone it down to more realistic version in my head and don't even notice.

albertzeyer 12y ago

Do you have some good reference about this hypothesis? I'm not really into neuroscience but this really interests me. I'm more on the machine learning side with artificial neural networks, but I often wondered whether some sleep-like phases could get me some improvements. Of course, the question is, what exactly should happen in that phase. What particular neural connections should I strengthen?

coldtea 12y ago
Perhaps it has no analogous to software neural networks? Looks like this "strengthening" is needed because there's actual "matter", "tissue" etc involved.
- mrexroad 12y ago
  from what i recall (no documentation link, but it's been posted here before) strengthening is more about making associations/connections for the things that are important. so if you have CPU bound batch jobs that run each night for identifying new connections between clusters of data... it seems like it'd be pretty analogous. it's not like things we 'forgot' weren't stored, or somehow dropped from memory; we just couldn't access it when we needed to later, and once reminded we're fully aware. there's also been studies on people who suffer a traumatic experience; if they're deprived sleep following the event then the memories are less severe/traumatic.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

cLeEOGPw 12y ago

By "discovered" I assumed more of like "deepened knowledge of". I guess I'm so accustomed to sensationalist titles by now that I immediately tone it down to more realistic version in my head and don't even notice.