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Posted by gmays 2 days ago

Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation due to flushing fluid from brain(news.mit.edu)
594 points | 283 comments
earless1 2 days ago|
So biological garbage collection pauses then? skip sleep, and the brain tries to run gc cycles during runtime. Causing attention and performance latency spikes. Evolution wrote the original JVM.
dathinab 1 day ago||
this might explain how "power napping" (<30min) can help so much when you are sleep deprived even through it's too short to really count as sleep. I wonder if you can find that when sleep deprived people power nap a "flush" happens then
hinkley 1 day ago||
There’s a phenomenon we have known about since at least the late 1980s when Race Across America riders were using it.

Essentially these guys try to stay up for the first few days and then sleep less than 8 hours after that. Way less. Many of them end up hallucinating by the end, and only their extreme fitness levels probably save them from just dying from lack of sleep.

The trick is that waking up to daylight makes you feel more rested. So the teams would have their riders sleep 2-3 hours from just before dawn until dawn so they would wake up to sunlight. Physiologically the difference is small, but psychologically it’s much bigger.

Some of the effect of power napping is likely the same sort of trickery, just as caffeine is partly trickery and partly adrenal.

ra 1 day ago|||
I used to do adventure races of 24 or 48 hour duration. can confirm that after 20+ hours of endurance you 100% start having microsleeps and hallucinations. 20 mins sleep is all you need to get going again for a few more hours.
hinkley 1 day ago||
Seen any pink elephants?
Ccecil 1 day ago||
At that point...shadow elephants.
hinkley 1 day ago||
My dad got afib from doing a 24 hour challenge and I’m so glad I never participated. Be careful out there.

The only marathon I ever did was cram for a couple finals and playing computer games between them and after. I was working on 72 hours when the blue on my monitor started to ripple and decided it was time to go to bed… almost an hour after it started.

justinclift 1 day ago|||
> dying from lack of sleep.

Is that actually a thing, rather than just hearsay?

hinkley 1 day ago|||
Lack of sleep exacerbates existing medical conditions to a substantial degree. Cortisol levels and inflammation markers start to rise after around two days.

And in particular if you abuse epinephrine enough. Caffeine blocks the sensation of fatigue, epinephrine does it even moreso, and up until I was in college, when my roommate told me about it, could be purchased from truck stops as an “allergy medication” but truckers use it to pull double shifts. If you keep taking it you will feel fine right up until you keel over.

South Korea has places you can rent a computer. Some are 24 hour. There was a case a while back where a middle aged man stayed awake for around 50 hours and died at his computer. Officially he died from lack of sleep.

withinboredom 1 day ago|||
Yes. There is even a prion disease you can get that makes it so you can’t fall asleep, causing you to go crazy… then catatonic, then die.
layer8 2 days ago|||
Luckily it doesn’t clear all unreferenced memory, though.
blauditore 2 days ago|||
Fun fact: Suppressed/hidden/lost memories due to trauma that appear to re-surface through therapy are not a real thing, as previously thought (and still by some psychotherapists). Nowadays it's understood by psychology that any memories "re-surfacing" in therapy are in fact newly created, although the patient themselves cannot tell the difference. Allegedly, whole accusations of childhood abuse may have been created out of thin air, without the victim realizing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy (see research section)

pcthrowaway 2 days ago|||
Sure it's a real thing for memories to surface that were previously buried. It's happened to me.

If it happens in therapy, that doesn't mean the memories are "implanted". And not all memories lack the ability to validate them... for example, if you've forgotten someone's name, then remember it later, you can call out to them by their name to confirm that you've correctly remembered it.

Memories tumble around in the brain all the time, not all memories are easy to access, but that doesn't mean they're inaccessible.

The point that memories can also be implanted or fabricated during therapy is absolutely an important one, but dismissing the possibility for memories to resurface (and conflating any situation where this might happen with a specific type of discredited therapy) is needlessly reductive.

dbspin 2 days ago||||
The problem is not that memories can't be repressed. There's plenty of research demonstrating repression does exist as a defence mechanism. The problem is that even highly evocative memories can also relatively easily be falsified, or modified through elicitation and reframing. Since there's no neurological stenographer, there is no mechanism even in principle to identify the difference between the two. With potential consequences like the satanic panic of recovered and elicited memories of sexual abuse. That's what Elizabeth Loftus and others have shown, and shown so thoroughly that eye witness testimony should never be trusted.
saltcured 2 days ago|||
As a counterpoint to this, I am replying here because I can't make myself write a polite response to the GPP.

Yes, witness testimony is always potentially flawed.

But knowing "some repressed memory recovery is false" does not justify saying that repressed memories are not a real thing. Repressed memories do happen. They do come back sometimes. When they do, they are just as valid as any normal memory that a person thinks they always had.

I know because I had them myself. Mine were of trauma in the age range from 5-9. I had a high "ACE score" when I eventually looked into this. I did not have any therapy session prompting the recall, I just remembered them spontaneously around age 15 when I was empathizing with a schoolmate who told me about domestic violence. It was a sickening feeling to have this whole phase of my past come unlocked.

Amazingly, it submerged into repression again. I next remembered it at about age 20. In between, I had years of basically not remembering/knowing that I had any of this trauma or that I had experience the earlier recall. They all came back together, again triggered by an empathetic moment in college. Again it was disorienting to have this whole aspect of my past reopen.

At that later point, I confronted people who were around my childhood and got enough of a painful discussion, confession, and apology to know that these memories were not invented.

I had other forms of childhood trauma that never submerged. I don't know why this one section did.

I find it very offensive for someone to make broad statements that these phenomena do not exist.

blauditore 1 day ago|||
Distancing yourself from a trauma (as a coping mechanism), not having any thought of it for years, and then have it re-surface is not the same as fully suppressed, inaccessible memories as discussed in the article.

If it takes long, intense therapy to "bring back", it's almost cerainly untrue or falsified. There was a case of accused childhood abuse among close relatives of me, by someone who found out about this in therapy. It tore apart the family. I cannot take any sides because I was not there and cannot know the truth, but it checks all the boxes of falsified memories. It has destroyed multiple lifes. That's how I even learned about that stuff, and why I care.

Btw, better source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory (I originally mostly read stuff in my native language, so I didn't what to look for initially)

oceanplexian 1 day ago||||
You might "think" you had a repressed memory but it could all be completely made up. You might even get other people to believe it, because human memory is incredibly faulty. Shared delusions are literally a "known bug" of human biology. Wikipedia has a whole page on them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux). The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epi...) is yet another example

The thing that changed though is since the 2010s everyone has a high definition camera in their pocket. Everything you do is recorded online. Kids that grew up in the last few years will have their entire childhood recorded in some way or another. Every movement tracked by GPS. Therefore, while I don't agree completely, I wouldn't be surprised if some assumptions about psychology are upended and a great deal of so called repressed memories turn out to be bogus when we can easily disprove them.

JohnMakin 1 day ago|||
The person you’re responding to said they did the work of verifying themselves with third parties. Do you not believe that too? People dont suddenly just admit to committing severe abuse because they were convinced to do so. In fact, usually the opposite happens with abusers - they delude themselves into thinking the abuse never happened and believe/defend this very aggressively.

This whole thread is gross. I’d say you should be ashamed of yourself but you likely lack the prerequisite self inspection.

saltcured 1 day ago|||
Malicious suppression and gas-lighting are also known functions of human biology.

Yes, real life is messy and ideals like justice are quite difficult or impossible to achieve.

Don't assume you can cleverly deduce a nice, absolute and comfortable answer. That's just another coping mechanism called rationalization.

eiginn 1 day ago||||
This mirrors my experience as well of multiple instances over my life of repressing childhood trauma and some event or conversation suddenly bringing it back to the surface.
jimmaswell 1 day ago||
Not to minimize your experience or anything like that, I'm just thinking out loud: What's typically the delineation between repressed and "not on the mind at the moment"? We naturally "forget" things all the time because there's no need for them to be in our current context window, e.g. I can't recite every coffee shop I've been to, but maybe if you start talking about a coffee shop with uncomfortable seats, I'll remember the one I went to with uncomfortable seats. Not a comparable experience in general of course, but one wouldn't say I repressed the coffee shop. Is it more like if I started at "uncomfortable coffee shop", nothing came to mind, but then I later remembered only after smelling some special flavor of coffee beans they had had?
saltcured 1 day ago|||
A repressed memory and its associated knowledge and entailment is "not there" until triggered properly. To the extent that our autobiographical memories construct our sense of identity, repressed memories have been censored from ourselves. And, I think it is censored for a purpose, not because it was one too many bits of trivia to keep in ready memory. I think it is a coping mechanism like very deep and targeted denial or dissociation.

When such memories come back, it can be like a mini identity crisis. You suddenly know things that are counter to your self-identity from the moment before. Once I was able to absorb the whole picture and not recoil back into repression, it became a permanent and unpleasant part of my self. .

There can be flashbacks of related events, some of which I also might feel are remembered for the first time in a long time. Those little flashbacks might be like remembering your specific uncomfortable cafe. The overall memory recovery is like suddenly realizing I spent years in a theater of war, that happened to have such cafes in it.

JohnMakin 1 day ago||||
IME for me repressed is “not on the mind at the moment” but like so constant that any attempt to access it, your subconscious fights to divert your attention from it. it’s kind of like dim stars you can only see out of the corner of your vision.

the craziest one I had, my reaction wasn’t “oh my god i never knew i had this memory” it was “wow, i cant believe i havent thought about that in 25 years.” I knew and had known it was there all along, I just literally never thought of it to the point my other thoughts just didnt collide with it, ever. It’s almost like your brain just puts it in storage in a dark corner of your garage.

I understand it isn’t the same for everyone, but that was how it felt for me.

TLDR for me it was dissociation, and the only treatment that ever worked was scraping the corners of my mind for stuff like this and it got so much better the issues basically went away. I used a great deal of meditation, particularly tibetan buddhism.

mrsvanwinkle 1 day ago|||
I can objectively say your reply minimizes the previous two posts who shared childhood traumas by the objective fact that you are implying (if they are not able to satisfy your Scientific Endeavor) that, if there is no delineation, then their repression of childhood trauma is equivalent and minimized or perhaps exalted if coffee is your religion to the repression of your religious experience of this coffee shop. If you were perhaps a child victim in this coffee shop maybe? You literally erased the trauma part. That is the delineation if you still need to think about this out loud
mrsvanwinkle 1 day ago||||
Thank you so much, the parent thread was truly an uncomfortably disturbing read and your post is a necessary contrast to "rational" "objective" "minds" armchairing something so delicate with gross finality.
JohnMakin 1 day ago|||
Thanks so much. I was wanting to write a scathing response as well but you calmly explained what I wanted to. I had severe childhood abuse that was documented by third parties I’d completely forgotten about - when I remembered them in therapy, my therapist thought they were fake or delusional too and sorta gaslit me about it. I had to go hunt down the receipts, which for me was traumatic in and of itself and permanently severed a few relationships with my family members, which didn’t have to happen. I fired her over it.

The comments in this thread are indeed disturbing. Clearly many on this forum have led blessed lives and can’t imagine people having it differently,

blauditore 23 hours ago|||
Repressed memory due to trauma is "scientifically discredited" nowadays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory
DiscourseFan 2 days ago||||
There are two types of repression, however. The notion that primarily repressed memories--say, those of being breastfed, of being potty trained--could ever resurface is bogus of course. But it is that original violence, first of being cared for, and then having that care taken away and even, in many cases, transforming into authoritarian violence in order to be socialized properly, that precipitates all other "secondary" repressions like Freudian slips, even screen memories or rationalizations. No, most people traumatized past the age of say, 5, won't readily forget it. But perhaps they will have a way of reconciling with that trauma in an unhealthy or not fully conscious manner (consider self-harming, or drug abuse, making up a narrative in order to stay with a partner who violently abuses them). And they will not readily connect their traumatic experiences with their unhealthy coping mechanisms. And we could say that the connection between unconscious behaviors and trauma, when revealed, could be considered a "re-surfacing." Even if I can't remember being breastfed, I know that I find the warm embrace of another's arm's comforting and soothing, and this perhaps relates to my original state of relaxation as a child in my mother's arms, for instance.
drdeca 1 day ago||
Why would it relate to your past experience of being held in your mothers arms, rather than to whatever inbuilt tendencies that lead one to respond well to being held in one’s mother’s arms while a baby?

Like, if kissing is derived from impulses relating to breastfeeding (which is a hypothesis that, AIUI, is in good standing, though not the only one in good standing nor necessarily more favored than a couple others), I wouldn’t think that therefore someone who was only ever bottle-fed as a baby would therefore not get anything out of kissing. The appeal of “my lips on another person” should be there regardless, just as it was for the first time a baby is breastfed (though, of course, it is also a cultural thing: not all cultures have had kissing as a standardized way of expressing affection, so whether one grows up in a context where kissing plays a role, that probably also plays a part in whether one finds it appealing to have one’s lips on another person).

layer8 2 days ago||||
People can remember things that hadn’t re-entered their mind for decades. It certainly happened to me a number of times (completely trauma-unrelated and not actively elicited).
Aurornis 2 days ago|||
A valid memory spontaneously re-entering your mind is different.

The idea of "repressed memories" was that people had hidden memories that they couldn't access, even if they tried. According to the theory, even if someone brought up the past event and tried to remind the person about it, they would be unable to recall it happening because their brain had blocked it out.

The idea was that only intervention by a therapist or some other special event could help the person "unlock" the repressed memories, making them available for remembering again.

What was really happening was that some therapists were leading people into "remembering" things that didn't happen through aggressive prompting and pushing, much like what happens when an aggressive investigator convinces a vulnerable person to falsely confess to something they didn't do.

tehjoker 2 days ago||
I wouldn't be surprised if there are inaccessible, partly corrupted memories encoded in the hippocampus. I suspect most of them cannot be prompted by a therapist though, and likely there is no practical way to recover them.
strbean 2 days ago||
I think it's all a matter of finding a trigger (or reference) to grab the memory. A therapist talking to you almost certainly wouldn't achieve that, but walking down the street and smelling an odd smell might.
rkhassen9 2 days ago|||
I once found a recording of a lab session in high school physics. A day I completely forgot about. A moment that had no bookmarks in my brain.

Other things about that day were surfaced. How my braces felt and the fear I felt about forgetting a textbook.

All real, but unsurfaced until then.

t0mas88 1 day ago||
That makes sense considering that human memory is strongly based on associations. Activating nearby memories can bring things back.

If you hear the first tones or words of a song you're much more likely to be able to tell the lyrics that follow compared to being asked to say those lyrics based on the title.

tehjoker 2 days ago|||
I think it depends on the stage of degradation and whether the network is still connected to something that can interpret it.
GuB-42 2 days ago||||
This is a more precise statement than just "you can recall things you thought you forgot".

It is specifically about trauma, and generally you don't forget traumatic events and that's often a big part of the problem. We are not talking about trivial things like the name of your maths teacher in high school, which have a tendency to come and go.

It is also specifically about therapy, that is an environment where you are actively encouraged to recall memories. We know how easy it is to make up memories, especially with the help of a third party (here, the therapist).

Combine the two: memories that are hard to forget and an environment conductive to making false memories and it becomes very likely that the "lost" memories are completely made up.

Muromec 1 day ago|||
>It is specifically about trauma, and generally you don't forget traumatic events and that's often a big part of the problem.

Oh, of course you can.

theshackleford 1 day ago|||
> and generally you don't forget traumatic events

That depends on how many you endured really. Only so much room in the old noggin with everything else important going on.

worldsayshi 2 days ago||||
My guess is that long term memory recovery is inherently a reconstruction from the pieces that you have retained. So it is not unlikely to include dreamed up parts.
Aurornis 2 days ago|||
The debunked recovered memory therapy was something different: They would use different techniques and leading questions to try to get a patient to think they remembered something that may not have happened at all.

Some of the techniques included hypnosis or even giving the patients (including children) sedative-hypnotic drugs before pressuring them with the leading questions.

If they could eventually get the person or child to claim to have some memory of the event (after asking a lot of leading questions and maybe even drugging them) they considered it to be a recovery of the memory.

bpj 2 days ago||||
This has been my experience as someone who has experienced childhood trauma, and what I've inferred from my therapist. He taught me that the memories I have are typically exaggerations of what happened and it's hard to pin down what truly happened. The only evidence I have that has any merit is my siblings can corroborate with similar experiences since it happened to all of us, and I'm sensitive to things related to these traumas. Almost every day I can feel the things that happened, and on my worst days these areas are much more sensitive.

On top of that, I have legitimate memories that were not traumatic, but still related to the same traumas because said person attempted to encourage these activities throughout my young life on rare occasions. I didn't remember what happened as a kid, but I knew something wasn't right and I wasn't comfortable. It wasn't until I was almost 30 that I had my first "flashback" which was a fractured memory, I still remember it looked like a faded photograph in my mind, and it was accompanied by an extremely uncomfortable feeling.

The re-surfacing memories aren't real in a sense, but in my case they aren't entirely fake either.

I wonder if it's possible that things can be completely imagined with absolutely no basis what-so-ever in certain circumstances, and I also wonder how difficult it is to discern that. It seems to be a difficult concept to manage.

layer8 2 days ago|||
The accuracy of recollection can certainly vary, but the point is that some information is retained long-term even when it isn’t made use of in the meantime. Of course one could argue that actually it is being made use of unconsciously, but I’m skeptical of that, given the relative irrelevance of the details that can be recollected. It’s also not that difficult to imagine that some memory-representing micro-structures in the brain just happen to be stable over decades even when they remain untapped.
warmedcookie 2 days ago||||
Indeed. I was browsing a Nintendo fan site I made in 1998 on archive.org when I was just 11 years old. I don't remember every detail about making it, but my brain had no problem stitching all the pieces it did retain back together.

On the other hand, I do have some Gandalf "I have no memory of this place" moments for other things.

kulahan 2 days ago|||
They won't remember it accurately anyways, so it's kind of a moot point.

Though you're right - a specific scent can easily call up an ancient, forgotten memory.

elmomle 2 days ago||||
The statement "there is evidence of black swans" does not justify the conclusion "every swan is black".
fsckboy 2 days ago||
if you specialize in looking for black swans, and you've looked for more black swans than anybody ever, and all the black swans you thought you'd found have turned out to be sooty white swans, people might be interested in reading about your experience and have their faith shaken that black swans actually exist.

I'm reminded of the story of dragon sightings in Great Britain: after the printing press and newspapers and newspaper reporters chasing stories emerged, as news distribution out from city centers into rural areas increased, it seems dragons picked up and moved farther away, only being spotted in the hinterlands without news.

You apparently would keep your mind open to the idea that dragons don't like the smell of newsprint as no other conclusion could be more plausible sheerly on the basis of logic?

musicale 1 day ago||
Dragons are smart, and wary of human civilization. They still remember St. George and his ilk.
DANmode 17 hours ago||||
I can see both existing, regardless of my interest in debating probability of incidence of each.
bollocks9 2 days ago||||
What about Dr. Jim Tucker’s two child psych cases, James Leininger and Ryan Hammons?

One remembered memories of a WWII pilot named James Huston Jr. and the other a deceased Hollywood agent named Marty Martyn.

Putting aside the reincarnation hypothesis for the moment, do you think the kids invented the details and coincidentally happened to match to a real person or were they fully coached? Maybe they didn’t get enough sleep or got too much sleep?

layman51 1 day ago||||
This idea of unconscious memories perhaps being a type of fantasy is also discussed in this article too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud%27s_seduction_theory

agumonkey 2 days ago||||
I beg to differ, or at least I'd need clarification, some people experience traumatic visions from what is assumed repressed memories (with or without therapy)

It might be something that one might not understand if he/she doesn't live through it I guess

ghurtado 2 days ago||||
> any memories "re-surfacing" in therapy are in fact newly created,

You're saying that those memories are exactly the same as all the other memories.

Every time you "recall" something, you are not pulling up some file that is always the same. You are actively recreating the memory.

There's nothing "fun" or insightful about this, this mechanism has been known for a long time.

Obviously it's not unique to psychotherapy.

> may have been created

Most things that "may" have happened do not warrant absolute statements such as "that's not a thing" (which, incidentally, is a particularly empty statement in any context, since every thing is a thing)

slater 2 days ago||||
Gonna need some citations on that “fun fact”
blauditore 2 days ago|||
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy (especially the research section)
ghurtado 2 days ago|||
Claim: "modern cancer research is a scam"

Proof: "colloidal silver has been used to attempt to cure cancer".

Solid logic.

svnt 2 days ago||||
That is extremely weak to nonexistent counter-evidence that seems to focus on supporting Loftus, who has put a lot of effort into the defense of her public persona. I don’t disagree that it is possible to manufacture memories but the evidence isn’t there to support your conclusion or the converse.
Aurornis 2 days ago||
Recovered-memory therapy (the topic of the Wikipedia article) is very clearly quack science and has been discredited.

Some of the techniques used in the therapy include giving patients sedative-hypnotic drugs to put the patient in a waking dream-like state while the therapist asks leading questions to get them to "remember" an event. The same drugs they used are known to be associated with false memories, like when someone falsely recalls something from a vivid dream as having actually happened.

svnt 1 day ago||
It has fallen out of favor based on a lack of evidential support, for sure. It has not really been dismantled publicly scientifically, but mostly quietly, perhaps in order to protect its practitioners, perhaps because the research cannot currently be ethically conducted.

I am not advocating for it, just stating the near total lack of substantive scientific evidence presented either in support or opposed.

shadyKeystrokes 2 days ago|||
[dead]
ghurtado 2 days ago|||
People downvoting a request for supporting evidence is peak Hacker News.
fsckboy 2 days ago||
people demanding supporting evidence without expending any effort themselves is peak internet.
jjk166 2 days ago|||
The onus of proof lies on those making a claim. If you're unwilling to back up what you say, don't say it.
nwienert 1 day ago|||
In science. On a casual forum you have no obligation and I’d rather someone leave a short comment so I at least know, if I’m interested I’ll go look and verify myself.
fsckboy 1 day ago|||
on a discussion board? no, there is no onus of proof, because nothing is riding on it, just as you don't need proof to reject the ideas.

demanding citations is the favorite trick of people who want to waste your time precisely because they disagree with you and no matter what you come up with, they'll never give in. therefore, one should never give in to it.

rather, doing your own research and contributing it to the discussion is the lifeblood of online communities.

theshackleford 1 day ago|||
It’s not my job to track down proof only every bullshit claim thrown at me.
anal_reactor 2 days ago||||
Most people think that when their memory fails it's just the act of not remembering something, but misremembering something happens equally often, and completely making up shit also does happen. It's just like LLM hallucinations.
bozhark 1 day ago|||
Careful with this absolute assumption. The brain rationalizes. Though irrationally.

Sometimes yes, created to validate, sometimes no, unlearns to disassociate

DenisM 2 days ago||||
Cleanup is an LRU process.

Once a memory lapses you have to relearn from life experience (or not at all).

thaumasiotes 2 days ago||
No, a lapsed memory can be provoked. It doesn't have to be relearned. It is "lapsed" because the organizational path to it within your brain has been lost, like a book in a library that has been left out of the card catalog, but just like the book, if you happen to find it anyway, it will be there.

Compare, from https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/anthropology-... :

> at the first news of English ships in the area, Buckley rushed to the spot. He attempted to make contact, but couldn’t swim out to the ship and couldn’t convince the ship to send a boat to him (Buckley had, at this point, forgotten how to speak English.) Buckley was again heartbroken until another ship showed up, and he found the English colonists and tried to approach them:

> “Presently some of the natives saw me, and turning round, pointed me out to one of the white people; and seeing they had done so, I walked away from the well, up to their place, and seated myself there, having my spears and other war and hunting implements between my legs. The white men could not make me out–my half-cast colour, and extraordinary height and figure [Buckley was around 6’5” or taller,]–dressed, or rather undressed, as I was–completely confounding them as to my real character. At length one of them came up and asked me some questions, which I could not understand; but when he offered me bread–calling it by its name–a cloud appeared to pass from over my brain, and I soon repeated that, and other English words after him. …

> “Word by word I began to comprehend what they said, and soon understood, as if by instinct, that they intended to remain in the country; that they had seen several of the native chiefs, with whom–as they said–they had exchanged all sorts of things for land; but that I knew could not have been

I submit that it takes more than a day to learn English if you don't already know it.

Once I was in a Toys-R-Us and noticed a cover image among the bottom-of-the-barrel DVD display which caused me to put what I was doing on hold for several minutes while I stared at the DVD. I bought it, and it turned out to be a movie I had watched many times when I was very young, but that information hadn't been accessible to me.

bigbuppo 2 days ago||||
I forgot what I was going to type, but I didn't get enough sleep last night.
jyounker 2 days ago||||
Are you sure about that?
ghurtado 2 days ago|||
I realize you're making a joke, but there is no such thing as "unreferenced memories", as in, something that is no longer in use and has been removed from the brain.

Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there, even if most are beyond conscious access. Memories quite literally become a permanent part of you.

A lot of people mistakenly think of human memory as a sort of hard drive with limited capacity, with files being deleted to make room for new ones. It's very much not like that.

pdonis 2 days ago|||
If you are implying that human memory has infinite capacity, that's not possible. The human brain is a finite, physical thing. It can't store an infinite amount of data.

If you just mean that human memory has a finite capacity that's much larger than anyone has come close to reaching by storing the memories of a normal human lifetime, that might make sense.

Do you have any references for your statements about memory? I'm not familiar with whatever science there is in this area.

jjk166 2 days ago|||
The claim that everything is there does not imply infinite, or even large capacity.

Consider an exponentially weighted moving average - you can just keep putting more data in forever and the memory requirement is constant.

The brain stores information as a weighted graph which basically acts as lossy compression. When you gain more information, graph weights are updated, essentially compressing what was already in there further. Eventually you get to a point where what you can recall is useless, which is what we would consider forgotten, and eventually the contribution of a single datapoint becomes insignificant, but it never reaches zero.

pdonis 1 day ago|||
> The claim that everything is there does not imply infinite, or even large capacity.

It implies enough capacity to store everything. But what you describe is not storing everything.

> lossy compression

Which means you're not storing all the information. You're not storing everything.

> When you gain more information, graph weights are updated, essentially compressing what was already in there further.

In other words, each time you store a new memory, you throw some old information away.

Which the person I was responding to said does not happen.

balex 1 day ago|||
And this description is based on what?
ghurtado 2 days ago||||
I didn't mean either of the things that you are wondering whether I meant, so i can't give you evidence of those things you made up yourself.

If you have questions about my comment, I'm happy to try to explain myself better

"I didn't understand you at all, so you must have meant either A or B" is not the way to reach an understanding

pdonis 2 days ago|||
> i can't give you evidence of those things you made up yourself.

I didn't ask for that. I asked if you have references for what you said. Even if I misunderstood you, that shouldn't be a reason for you not to give references for your statements, if you have them.

If you don't have any references to back up your statements, then I'm not sure what you're basing them on.

vanviegen 2 days ago|||
Your words: "Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there [..]"

How would that not imply infinite storage?

dragonwriter 2 days ago|||
It wouldn't imply infinite storage because human life is not infinite in time and memories do not accumulate at an infinite rate in storage consumed per unit time, so the total storage over a human lifespan is finite, so the claim can be true with finite storage.

It is almost certainly false, but it doesn't require infinite storage to be true.

pdonis 1 day ago||
> human life is not infinite in time and memories do not accumulate at an infinite rate in storage consumed per unit time

Which would put it into the category of the second part of my comment--which the person I was responding to said was not relevant to what they meant.

standardly 2 days ago|||
> The human brain is a finite, physical thing. It can't store an infinite amount of data.

True, but it doesn't really detract from his statement because do we really know what that upper bound even is? I don't think we come close to the theoretical storage limit... So saying "every memory you have is permanently stored" is effectively true, at least true enough for a thought experiment like this. Perhaps when people live to be 200 years old and we know more about the brain we can test this, though.

I used to be weary of learning new, complex things, thinking I'd "lose" old knowledge XD

pdonis 1 day ago||
> I don't think we come close to the theoretical storage limit

That was the point of the second part of my comment--which the person I was responding to said was not relevant to what he meant.

mym1990 2 days ago||||
Knowing almost nothing about memory and the brain, I don't know if I agree with "Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there".

Memories seem to be constructed by a group of neurons together, and it seems clear that neurodegeneration is a thing, whether by trauma or due to aging. When pathways degenerate, maybe you have a partial memory that you brain can help fill the gaps with(and often incorrectly), but that does not make it the original memory.

vanviegen 2 days ago||||
Bullocks. Memories fade. Or do you really believe that 'subconsciously' I still know what I had for dinner today exactly 30 years ago?

The way I understand it, it's just that, unlike on disk, the deletion process is not binary. Weak connections that are not revisited regularly gradually become weaker, until they're undistinguishable from noise (false memories).

lux_sprwhk 2 days ago|||
I had this experience at Big Bend State park that makes me think they are. I didn't bring enough water and camped in the primitive area. At night, I was dehydrated pretty bad. When I finally got a little sleep (it was tough to say the least), I had this vivid dream where I put a pebble in my mouth and started sucking on it to make saliva. Then I woke up for real, and I knew it because there was a lot of wind IRL, that wasn't in the dream. So I took out a coin from my back, put it in my mouth to make saliva, and got a little bit of relief. Enough for a couple hours until it was dawn, and had enough light to hike down to the restroom area.

I don't know where I got this trick. Likely some survival show or some novel. But I don't have any background in survival, otherwise, I would have brought a lot more water.

So my brain knew there was a memory that could help and made up a dream about it is my theory.

Zenul_Abidin 2 days ago|||
Is Sun Microsystems in the room with us?
hinkley 1 day ago|||
Skip enough sleep and parts of your brain will try to nap while you’re doing things like meetings.
timeinput 1 day ago||
Depending on the meeting it might be worth a nap even if I'm well rested.
hinkley 1 day ago|||
But in that cause you are well aware that you have invested no brain at all instead of investing half a brain while thinking you’re engaged.
jama211 1 day ago|||
That’s every meeting I’m in that contains more people than myself and two others.
apatheticonion 1 day ago||
This is a hilarious comment, I actually laughed out loud
HEmanZ 2 days ago||
I hope that the actual medical field starts taking note of this.

My wife still has to work 24 hour shifts with no sleep, performing emergency surgeries no matter how long it has been since she slept. During residency only a few years ago she and her co-residents were almost weekly required to do 36 hour shifts (on top of their regular 16 hours per day, 5 day per week schedule) and once even a 48 hour shift when the hospital was short staffed.

Of course I’m sure they won’t. No one cares if doctors are over worked.

lordnacho 2 days ago||
I've never understood those long shifts. Unless a shift just means you are there but sleeping, what is the reason for allowing it? We don't let truck drivers do 24h shifts, why do doctors the world over seem to do this?
munificent 2 days ago|||
My understanding is that the research shows that the harm to patient care from information loss during doctor shift turnover is worse than the harm from fatigued doctors.

Yes, a tired doctor sucks. But a tired doctor who already has the patient's state loaded into their head may still be better than doctor who is completely fresh in both senses.

It's a hard problem.

amluto 1 day ago|||
I have never, in my entire life, ever personally encountered a situation in which a doctor paid enough attention to anyone over a period of time exceeding two hours that I could possibly believe that keeping the doctor on shift for a long time had the slightest benefit.

I’m sure cases exist. But I’d be rather surprised if they’re common.

K0HAX 1 day ago||||
Instead of 1 doctor covering a 24 hour shift, why not pair them and overlap?

12:00am - 6:00am: Doctor 1 and Doctor 4 are doing everything together.

6:00am - 12:00pm: Doctor 1 and Doctor 2 are doing everything together.

12:00pm - 6:00pm: Doctor 2 and Doctor 3 are doing everything together.

6:00pm - 12:00am: Doctor 3 and Doctor 4 are doing everything together.

This way, all 4 doctors only do 12 hour shifts, and the patient's state is maintained continuously through all 24 hours.

janalsncm 1 day ago|||
The answer is there’s already a doctor shortage, and the US simply does not have the capacity to effectively 2x the doctor-patient ratio.

Doctors are also unlikely to want a 50% pay cut in exchange for shorter hours. They aren’t directly exposed to the risk caused by fatigue since they will have malpractice insurance. Therefore the safer method of care would be simply too expensive, and doctors wouldn’t see an upside.

Part of the shortage is a result of artificially constrained supply as there aren’t enough med school seats to keep up with demand.

IncreasePosts 1 day ago||
The doctor shortage is entirely caused by intentionally limiting how many doctors are admitted to med school every year
ineedaj0b 1 day ago||||
Doctors do not get along and that’s too many Drs. Each patient often has multiple speciality Drs visiting them and reviewing their case up to 3 or 4 sometimes already. Imagine being on consult and trying to figure out which guy on a team of 4 you should talk to about such and such.
munificent 1 day ago||||
Here's an anecdote that might help answer. When my wife was pregnant with our first doctor, she started hemorrhaging spontaneously ten weeks before her due date. We rushed to the ER.

1. Shortly after, a doctor A came in, asked some questions, looked at the chart, and told us she was having the baby tonight. Holy shit our life is about to get crazy and we're going to be parents 2+ months early! He leaves.

2. Several hours later doctor B comes in. We ask about delivery. "Oh, no. You're not going to have the baby now. But you will have to be on bed rest until the due date." Jesus, my wife is going to have to quit her job.

4. Even more hours later, now the next morning, doctor C arrives. "OK, you're free to go home. No bed rest needed. Just let us know if anything else happens."

My general experience with doctors is that you get as many unique opinions as there are doctors in the room. This is not an indictment of the profession. Human bodies are insanely complex, there is way more variation between them than most people realize, and doctors are operating under very very limited time and information.

Having overlapping doctors would likely cause even more patient confusion and increase the risk conflicting treatments. Also, it would obviously double the cost of care.

(My wife and baby were fine. Partial abruption. Very scary and my daughter was born five weeks early, but no other significant problems.)

janalsncm 1 day ago||
Many industries have solved this issue already. Use a pilot/copilot model. First doctor drives, second one mostly observes and makes sure the first one doesn’t make mistakes.
lostdog 1 day ago||
Then you'd need to pay more doctors, and it would be much harder for the hospital to make a lot of money!
someguyiguess 1 day ago||||
If engineers ran the world
patcon 1 day ago||||
Maybe doctors are divas and they tend to not communicate very well with others
lostlogin 1 day ago||||
That’s a lot of handovers.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2 days ago||||
What about the harm to the doctor themselves+the harm to the patient? Would the sum of both be worse?
arjvik 2 days ago||
One signed up knowing the risk

(not defending, I also think its insane, just devils advocate)

harperlee 2 days ago||||
That only works if the mean stay in the hospital (or at least the critical care period) is several hours but also way below 24h…
Timon3 2 days ago||
Longer shifts mean fewer shift turnovers for any patients that stay a sufficient amount of time, especially if longer than 24h.

The world doesn't run on boolean logic. A solution can improve an issue without solving it completely.

arcticfox 1 day ago||||
> Yes, a tired doctor sucks. But a tired doctor who already has the patient's state loaded into their head may still be better than doctor who is completely fresh in both senses.

AI fixes this. Imagine the boot time of loading a patient's state from dozens of labs and files vs. a summary that gets you to exactly what they're going to end up remembering anyways. And if a doctor finds something interesting that the AI doesn't flag, they should be flagging it in the chart for the next doctor anyways.

munificent 1 day ago|||
Jesus Christ you have to be fucking kidding me.

Your solution to information loss during doctor handover is to insert a brainless hallucinating program with zero responsibility into the middle?

solsane 1 day ago||||
In my experience, AI summarization is a pretty lame application. I don’t really need a block of potentially wrong, rephrased text. I’ve got a feeling that the same applies to healthcare.
toast0 1 day ago||||
If charting was sufficient, doctor (and nurse!) handover wouldn't be a problem.
thaumasiotes 1 day ago||||
> My understanding is that the research shows that the harm to patient care from information loss during doctor shift turnover is worse than the harm from fatigued doctors.

This would not appear to apply to emergency surgeries. They aren't done by doctors who are familiar with the patient anyway. (Neither are non-emergency surgeries. Surgeries are done by doctors who do that kind of surgery. Familiarity with the patient is useful in deciding what surgery should be done, but not in doing the surgery.)

renewiltord 1 day ago|||
The European Working Time Directive has requirements for rest, etc. Either Europeans have much better hand-off procedures, they don't know how to comply with the rules they make, or they're fucking idiots who are going to kill people due to information loss during shift turnover. It was proposed decades ago. I wonder what compliance is like in Germany, etc.
magicalhippo 1 day ago||||
Here in Norway the doctor's association have worked hard against it, and talking to a relative which became a doctor some years ago, it's primarly because they want to keep the extra premium pay they get from the "uncomfortable hours" as it's called here.
cma 1 day ago|||
The AMA works to prevent importing doctors from other countries, largely to maintain wages, but we don't have enough doctors.

Doctors boards and AGME (partly governed by AMA, but there is some amount of public representation) control residency admissions and board certification. We don't necessarily want low admissions standards, but there is a lot potential conflict of interest in constraining supply.

Some states, I think I read Florida recently, have started pushing back to allow in foreign doctors.

random3 2 days ago|||
I think both doctors and patients would want a different system for both doctors and patients. Having seen a poor performing medical system, and comparing it with the US medical system, all I can say it's that the US one doesn't seem designed to optimize health and well being of patients and, based on reading several articles representing doctors opinions, neither doctors'.

I do think it's maximially optimized to extract revenue. That can sometimes be good (e.g. good access to healthcare) but often times it's not great.

Given healthcare, along with education should be a national priority, both should be heavily "configured" to serve peoples' goals first and any financial goal should be secondary (although arguably useful).

I suspect the current shareholder structures from hedge funds are (intentionally or not) driving things in the wrong direction wrt to public health goals. This is article from a few days ago is also interesting https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45680695

tomaskafka 1 day ago|||
It is well estabilished that after 24 hours without sleep, the mental capabilities are similar to being lightly drunk. 36 hours is considerably more drunk.

If you were driving a truck in EU, you would have several mandatory 8h stops by then.

evulhotdog 1 day ago|||
Current ACGME rules allow a max of 30 consecutive hours, so not as bad but still not great for someone you would hope to have fine motor skills to save a life!
whamlastxmas 1 day ago|||
This stupid hazing ritual is only happening because of the AMA, which is doing it for really stupid "because we had to" logic.
ineedaj0b 1 day ago|||
her at her worst is better than 90% of people at their best.

if you get through and into a good med school -match into surgery- you are Peak in a way very few are.

I don’t see this changing unless they reduce the requirements for med school; if they let anyone in who wants in and force that group to work 30hr shifts - you’ll get enough bad outcomes the system will change.

There was a study, I believe on nurses and shift durations. The study found the nurses were happier with shorter shifts - but the patients did worse. Patients come first.

I could see a group of Doctors loudly proclaiming love for Donald Trump (and mentioning very much how great he is) and pleading the case for a change and something happening. He is an interesting president.

I would be interested in hearing a european drs perspective, I heard they work shorter shifts (but no EU dr I met has confirmed, it’s like meeting a unicorn)

lostlogin 1 day ago||
> her at her worst is better than 90% of people at their best.

A fraction of a fraction of a percentage of people are good at surgery.

If I need someone cutting me, I’d prefer someone good, and that they were rested.

bmitc 1 day ago|||
Were these continual shifts? I thought that doctor's on shift like this were given sleep rooms to sleep when they aren't needed.
evulhotdog 1 day ago||
Yeah they usually do have a dedicated sleeping space for their service. The thing is, they only sleep if there’s enough downtime. Depending on your service, size of the program, and of course who your patient population is, it could be a lot, or none at all.
jdthedisciple 2 days ago||
[flagged]
switchbak 2 days ago|||
This is the nature of the medical system in North America, and some other advanced nations. Also, you're not just being blunt, you're being both ignorant and arrogant.
jdthedisciple 2 days ago|||
If OP feels the same way, I offer my heartfelt apologies.

I don't think what I said would come across this negatively in person though, but okay..

cactusplant7374 1 day ago|||
GP's wife isn't being forced into this profession and they are making a lot of money from it. Do we need to offer sympathy for all people with difficult working conditions regardless of the remuneration?
cestith 2 days ago||||
Who said she was forced, and why the personal attack?
jdthedisciple 2 days ago||
> still has to work 24 hour shifts with no sleep

Reads like being more or less forced to me, it doesn't to you?

> and why the personal attack?

Not at all my intention! It's a genuine question, which I would ask myself too were I in OP's shoes

cestith 2 days ago||
I doubt her spouse makes her be a doctor. Most people who go through premed and medical school are pretty dedicated and driven on their own. This is a corporate vs labor issue, and likely not a domestic issue. I’m sure he dislikes it greatly, too.
HPsquared 1 day ago||
It's not so much "forced", as "given an offer they can't refuse".
astrange 1 day ago|||
A surgeon is going to make more than an SWE. Also, surgeons are famously unhappy with anyone questioning any of their decisions.
lostlogin 1 day ago||
It’s an interesting paradox.

Imagine doing your best to help someone and they die as a direct result.

Then you get to go to work and deal with the next case.

Or the patient has life changing, negative outcomes. Damn, that bad. Next case.

Living in that mental state takes a pretty unusual character type. We can expect some extreme behaviour.

It’s also interesting watching the change over time. The trainee versus consultant, or the surgeon as they near retirement.

I’m not a surgeon or a doctor and so I see a small part of their world but see some of the perks (they get everything) and some of the downsides, and there are a lot.

codethief 2 days ago||
> The scientists found that during these lapses, a wave of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flows out of the brain

> Lewis and colleagues showed that CSF flow during sleep follows a rhythmic pattern in and out of the brain

> Most significantly, they found a flux of CSF out of the brain just as those lapses occurred. After each lapse, CSF flowed back into the brain.

I can't believe the authors of the article didn't address one of the most obvious questions: Where does the CSF flow to and where does it flow back from? It's not like there are pipes leading out of the brain, or the CSF will just leave my brain through my ears or anything, will it?¹ What happens with the waste products? (¹ Though it would be kinda funny if this was where snot comes from.)

EDIT: Wikipedia's got the answer:

> Clearing waste: CSF allows for the removal of waste products from the brain,[3] and is critical in the brain's lymphatic system, called the glymphatic system. Metabolic waste products diffuse rapidly into CSF and are removed into the bloodstream as CSF is absorbed. When this goes awry, CSF can become toxic […]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid

dragonwriter 2 days ago||
> It's not like there are pipes leading out of the brain

There are, in fact, “pipes” leading out of the brain. Cerebrospinal fluid is (and this is probably somewhat oversimplified) produced from material in the bloodstream in the ventricles in the brain, flows through the system of ventricles and then out of the brain into the subarachnoid space around the brain and spinal cord, and is then reabsorbed into the bloodstream.

cvoss 2 days ago||
And some people literally need an actual pipe implanted to assist with CSF drainage.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/brain-shunt/abou...

svnt 2 days ago||
They didn’t put it in there because knowing the flow of CSF is so elemental to performing research in the field that it would be a waste of everyone’s time.
codethief 2 days ago||
This is a pop sci article, though?
rtaylorgarlock 2 days ago||
Long live healthy sleep for brain health, and thank goodness light exercise helps this same glymphatic system.
cestith 2 days ago|
ISTR that light exercise also helps with quality of sleep.
HPsquared 1 day ago||
It stands to reason.
stOneskull 1 day ago||
It lays to drain.
gcanyon 1 day ago||
What I want to know is: can we trigger these flushes? My grandfather died of/with Alzheimer’s, and I’d prefer not to follow in his footsteps. If we determine that these flushes are key to good brain health, and there were a way either through a pill or even a treatment to up the frequency of these flushes, that would be awesome.
pedalpete 1 day ago||
We can't "trigger" the flushes, however, it looks like we can increase the power of the pump.

This is specifically the area we work in traditionally called slow-wave enhancement which is stimulating the restorative function of sleep.

This paper [1] specifically looks at amyloid response as a result of stimulation and shows a corresponding relationship between stimulation response, amyloid response, and memory. I wouldn't say it's putting a bow on the results, but it is a very promising result.

If you're curious about what we're building, I'll be posting a ShowHN next week which dives into some of the data in a way regulatory requirements don't permit us to do on our website, but until then, check out https://affectablesleep.com

[1] https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afad228

amluto 1 day ago|||
Why is a headband a subscription service?
pedalpete 1 day ago||
The only way to make this a viable business. We experimented with full price up front, and didn't get any sales.

Long-term particularly if we can make the numbers work for a monthly subscription, it makes the technology more accessible.

tpoacher 1 day ago|||
The big dark pattern in "subcription-vs-ownership" discussions is that it is treated as an either-or situation, when it doesn't have to be.

In the past, subscription models were understood as a way to offer "loyal customers" a "better deal" than the standard alternative. They were a method to entice "loyalty", not a dark pattern to enforce "lock-in", continuous cash-extraction and control by artificially crippling a product. I've watched too many a product introduce unnecessary "restriction-features" or an artificial need for consumables, for the sole purpose of a "greedier" revenue stream, so the immediate reaction when I see such products now is one of scepticism.

If you offered an oldskool "expensive" non-subscription, no-internet-access-needed, lifetime-access-with-updates or pay-for-updates model alternative that made sense to non-perpetual users (even at a higher price compared to the subscription alternative), then I would have had more faith in the subscription argument, but as it stands I do not, and would assume most of your customer base doesn't either. They just put up with the "no-real-ownership-plus-overheads" model until they don't have to. Which also implies a very real expiration date for your product, and I'm sure there's a "reluctance tax" your company pays for this effect.

If you offered subscription as an alternative to the full purchase, but the customer could apply their subscription to count in some manner towards the full purchase at a later date, I'm sure you'd get a larger number of more willing and more loyal customers.

pedalpete 21 hours ago||
You make some very good points, particularly around the historical use of subscriptions.

Though I agree that some companies currently use subscription as continuous cash extraction strategy, but that's not us.

The reason SaaS is successful as a strategy is because it lowers the barrier to entry. Software which used to cost hundreds of dollars is now tens of dollars a month, and more people are willing to get on board with that.

As mentioned, we did offer a one-time option, in response to complaints about subscription, and we got zero sales. Even from the people who said "if this wasn't a subscription, I'd buy it".

When looking at our business model, there were a few things we considered when deciding on subscription.

1) The hardware is going to change and improve rapidly over the next few years. We decided to keep the price of the hardware fairly low so the upgrade investment is low.

2) As mentioned the one-time fee didn't sell, likely due to sticker shock. We've seen a few other companies in our space try this before, and they've all failed. Those failures are not only due to pricing, but I think it had a significant impact.

3) As unit economics improve to the point we can offer a monthly subscription as a starting point, that really makes this technology accessible to a wider audience, and particularly to some groups who need it most.

Our headband provides sleep tracking technology without a subscription, we're just not selling it as that right now, as the value, we believe, is in the improved sleep and health outcomes.

We look at the stimulation like an app that is running on the device, and it's just the first capability we are providing. We'll be expanding that offering in the future.

With your last sentence, do you mean a "rent-to-own" model? I'm not against that at all, but I'm not sure that really works today, or how we would explain that. It isn't common anymore, and I don't want us having to explain the business model to people being the barrier to sales. Which is why removed the full price option. Each decision point in a purchase causes friction.

amluto 1 day ago|||
I feel like sleep technology may be close to the worst market for this sort of tethered technology. I do not want a gizmo on me that is connected to the Internet when I’m sleeping
pedalpete 21 hours ago||
Our headband does not require an internet connection or bluetooth while sleeping. Data can be uploaded in the morning.
hammock 1 day ago|||
> We can't "trigger" the flushes

How do you know that?

pedalpete 1 day ago||
I work in neurotech/sleeptech and this is the primary function our work focuses on.

However, I also mis-stated that. It is possible to create a slow-wave, however only through magnetic stimulation (rTMS), but that is not realistic outside of a hospital environment.

hammock 1 day ago||
Ok awesome. Are you saying that because it is an autonomic process or some other reason?

You will probably say no but I wonder if those yogis who can exert some control over heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing pattern might try to target this process as well.

pedalpete 1 day ago||
I'm just saying that based on known science. I don't know if anyone has looked at if yogis, etc can control the glymphatic system.

What blew my mind when I got into neuro just over 5 years ago, is that the glymphatic system was only discovered in 2012!!!! We have SO much to learn about the brain.

Muromec 1 day ago|||
I know a reliable way to trigger this. 400 gram of lamb, one bell pepper, one or two leek, one zucchini, some random spices (red chili pasta from the shop works a-okay), put in at slow heat for an hour and a half, so by 4 in the evening it's ready and you can close your laptop. Serve with rice or mercimek chorbasi.

The fluids have no chance to not be flushed once you are done with it.

HPsquared 1 day ago|||
Choosing to sleep more, I guess.
laptopdev 1 day ago||
Carnivore
0xbadcafebee 2 days ago||
So... can we trigger it manually? I'd love to be able to lay down and press the 'flush brain' button.
g-b-r 2 days ago||
If you're very tired you should be able to fall asleep, or at least doze off, whenever you let yourself go.

It seems likely that you'll get those flushes right after falling asleep, so a nap of a few minutes could help a lot.

In my experience, after a night without sleep even a 30 seconds nap reinvigorates you significantly.

vrx-meta 2 days ago|||
Research on NDSR, I have been using this for days I had to wake up without proper rest.

If you have 15m, search this on YT for a guided practice and test it yourself.

GavinMcG 2 days ago|||
NSDR, rather—Non-Sleep Deep Rest.
BobaFloutist 2 days ago||||
I believe you were referring to NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest)?
Muromec 1 day ago|||
Mixing up acronyms is on brand with sleep deprivation.
vrx-meta 1 day ago|||
Yes, thanks for the correction. I need to get some real sleep.
niwtsol 2 days ago|||
Kind of related, but there is a concept of polyphasic sleep - where you sleep for small increments throughout the day (like 30 minutes every 3 hours). I did it for a bit at a startup thinking we were "hacking sleep" and "getting more productive hours out of every day!" - It takes awhile to transition to it, but once there, your scheduled "sleeps" are insane, 15 minutes, feel like straight to REM. The main problem was if you missed on schedule sleep you were a zombie.
tetha 2 days ago|||
Yeah, when I was looking into the plausibility and function of polyphasic sleep, I stumbled across studies from the US Airforce. Their conclusion was similar: In a controlled enviroment, it can be spectacular and work really, really well.

However, it is very, very fragile to any kind of interruption, so they stopped looking into it.

cestith 2 days ago|||
When I worked an overnight shift and lived alone, I got into a pattern of 2 to 3 hours a go three times a day. These were after work, halfway or so through my personal time, and before work. I used these separate times in between sleeps for work, almost exclusively for chores, and a dedicated slot for hobbies. I started each one refreshed, which was great. It doesn’t necessarily work so well when aligning your life with a partner.
pbhjpbhj 2 days ago||
Searching back, as I recall a video that was supposed to cause [increased] CSF flow, I did find this - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764730 about suggestions some learning difficulties might be due to interrupted CSF fluid flow.

The video (?) was related to clearing of plaques from the brain with a view to mitigating Alzheimer's effects.

It was not the NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest) videos a sibling commenter posted.

krackers 1 day ago||
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41942775
pbhjpbhj 1 day ago||
Thanks for that, I found a 40hz video ... it wrecked my Dell monitor (might be temporary?).

I'm not convinced that the screen nor the headphones are actually providing the required rates.

In the experiments they appear to use a large (c.1m^2) light box so the patient can watch a video from a tablet placed in the middle.

Reading your link made my brain 'resonate' in an unpleasant way; perhaps an auditory memory of watching the video.

All very interesting.

binary132 2 days ago||
What I’m picking up here is that if I can just get an automated CSF circulator installed I won’t need to sleep or get distracted when I’m tired. That was the point of this article, right?
ferguess_k 2 days ago||
I wonder if a 30-min nap improves the situation. But I need to tell the brain to hold the flushing until the nap.
JKCalhoun 2 days ago||
Anecdotally, it seems to. I have laid down and closed my eyes even for a short while. And believe that I have even had a "flushing" sensation, that feels like a mental fog being lifted (or "drained", I guess).

I pop up 5 minutes later and feel completely refreshed.

256_ 1 day ago|||
I do something similar, although there's an added peculiarity when I do it. I lie down for 5 minutes and wake up 9 hours later.
nullstyle 2 days ago||||
Fwiw, i have the opposite experience of napping. Napping adds to mental fog for me especially for the hour immediately after napping. Its not until several hours later that i actually experience any loss of mental fog or increase in clarity.
g-b-r 2 days ago||
It probably depends on how much sleep you're lacking, and how long the nap is.

My experience after sleeplessness nights is that even few seconds help significantly, especially when you're almost unable to function anymore.

If the nap lasts longer than 30 minutes, though, you have a good chance of feeling groggy afterwards.

assimpleaspossi 2 days ago||||
Agree though it's 10 minutes for me.

When I owned some property out in the country, it was a 2 1/2 hour car trip to get there. Sometimes I just couldn't finish the drive home but pulling over to the side of the road for a 10-minute nap made me feel fully refreshed.

ferguess_k 2 days ago|||
I had the same experience. The only trick is to keep it short, like 5-10 minutes. Any longer and the nap may bring negative impacts.
rtaylorgarlock 2 days ago|||
There's controversy over exact mechanisms involved in glymphatic function, so suffice it to say that allegedly even just NSDR / yoga nidra will engage a rest deep enough for glymphatic function to engage/improve
DenisM 2 days ago||
I was disappointed the article didn’t mention that. Can you give me some pointers. I will use Google but HN curated content is often a better starting point. :)
gwbas1c 2 days ago||
> I wonder if a 30-min nap improves the situation.

I pretty much wait until I feel drowsy, and then take a 15-30 minute nap

paglaghoda 2 days ago||
Rest in peace to all the college dudes covering the whole syllabus within 24 hours of the exam
wslh 2 days ago||
It is always great to follow the instructions from a psychiatrist [1].

[1] https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/08/how_to_take_ritalin_...

thesmtsolver 2 days ago|||
This is just outdated, bad and dangerous advice that a ton of recent research invalidates.

1. Ritalin, and other stimulants are not cognition enhancing for non-ADHD adults and may in fact do the opposite.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/smart-drugs-can-decrease...

2. > Because the doctor will rigorously apply artificial and unreliable diagnostic categories backed up by invalid and arbitrary screens and queries to make a diagnosis. So after this completely subjective and near useless evaluation is completed, your doctor should be able to exercise prudent clinical judgment to decide if Ritalin could be of benefit.

What else can you do for psychiatric conditions? We don't have a magic ADHD-o-meter but know that it statistically impacts lifespan, health, etc. Even for more objective measures like blood glucose, BP, BMI, clinical interventions are based on discrete thresholds that don't exist in nature.

wslh 23 hours ago||
You should be careful with your comment either. There is no absolute answer about people with non-ADHD don't having benefits with Ritalin.
plmpsu 2 days ago||||
I miss her.
MarcelOlsz 2 days ago||
What happened? Did they pass or something or just stop posting or what?
_--__--__ 1 day ago||
TLP was doxxed in a way that threatened their real life psychiatry practice, briefly blogged on Tumblr under a different psuedonym, and has since had little online presence other than rare tweets and randomly dropping a self-published book on Amazon (_Sadly, Porn_ by 'Edward Teach').
mctt 2 days ago|||
[flagged]
hombre_fatal 2 days ago|||
Everyone has an LLM tool a couple clicks away if they want it, so I don't think we need this kind of contribution. And this summary is too much of a summary to be useful anyways.
johnisgood 2 days ago||||
There is much more to it.

There is such a thing as state-dependent memory or context-dependent memory: recall is better when the environmental context (e.g. location, lighting, smells) matches the context of learning.

If you study while on Adderall, which alters your neurochemical state (increasing dopamine and norepinephrine activity), you may recall that material more effectively when you are in the same neurochemical state, that is, also on Adderall.

Similarly, if someone learns something while sober, they will generally recall it better when sober again, rather than under the influence of a drug.

It is the phenomenon where memory recall is improved when the internal physiological or psychological state matches that during learning.

fukka42 2 days ago|||
The comment above reduces the interesting article to a lacking one sentence summary. It is indicative of someone who is both too lazy to read something for themselves and for some reason thinks it is a good idea to admit this publicly.
znpy 2 days ago||
Not a college dude, but i used to work on shits (including night shifts) and adjusting to and from a five-nights (23:30-07:30) shift isn’t that pleasant either.
nfriedly 2 days ago||
I think you meant to say "...I used to work on shifts..."

That, or maybe try a laxative.

(Man, if ever there was a time I wanted emoji support on HN, this is it!)

JumpCrisscross 2 days ago|
Could ADHD be caused by a broken flushing response? Lots of flushing followed by intense focus caused by the tabula rasa?
Citizen8396 2 days ago||
Disordered sleep can cause executive dysfunction similar to ADHD, but it does not cause ADHD. It certainly can exacerbate it or be diagnosed incorrectly.
luciferin 2 days ago|||
I suppose it's possible, but it seems less likely to me because ADHD is a life long neurodevelopmental disorder that shows [visible physical changes in the brain on scans](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7879851/). That said, there are statistically more people with narcolepsy who have ADHD, and the same goes for sleep apnea. There's a number of hypotheses I've read as to why, to name a couple: related epigenetic causes, or [possible misdiagnosis](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7336577/) (narcolepsy is much harder to diagnose than ADHD if you don't have textbook symptoms). So there is definitely something there.
delecti 2 days ago|||
I'm not an expert, but that wouldn't really fit with my understanding of ADHD. It's not that we have a lack of attention ("defecit" of attention, as the name suggests), it's an impaired ability to direct it.

To abuse a metaphor, the sleep-deprivation-induced spontaneous CSF flush is slamming on the brakes of a car, and ADHD related attention shifts would be more like a drunk toddler is turning the steering wheel wherever they please, but the gas/brakes still work fine.

Geee 2 days ago|||
Not sure if it's related, but I have way more ADHD-like symptoms if I'm on late sleep schedule, but sleeping the same amount of hours.
mpascale00 20 hours ago||
Even if this is a possible factor it most certainly would not be the only cause.
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