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A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

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Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#11

Post by dsr_ »

dominotw wrote: post #9
omgitstom wrote: post #8

"Sleeping animals are incredibly vulnerable to attacks, with no obvious benefit to make up for it — at best, they waste precious hours that could be used finding food or seducing a mate; at worst, they could get eaten." It seems pretty obvious that sleep had an evolutionary advantage to conserve energy when the species couldn't be productive. For example, human sleep during the night because we can't forage / hunt /…

>because our vision requires light. doesn't that assume that requiring light came before sleeping at night. It could be the opposite, our vision requires light because we sleep at night?

Optical vision does not seem to require sleep:

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

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#12

Post by SamBam »

omgitstom wrote: post #8

"Sleeping animals are incredibly vulnerable to attacks, with no obvious benefit to make up for it — at best, they waste precious hours that could be used finding food or seducing a mate; at worst, they could get eaten." It seems pretty obvious that sleep had an evolutionary advantage to conserve energy when the species couldn't be productive. For example, human sleep during the night because we can't forage / hunt /…

"Pretty obvious" answers never hold up much to scrutiny, or the questions wouldn't be actively studied.

Many animals are nocturnal. They eat and mate during the night, and sleep during the day. From your theory, what reason do they have to sleep during the day? They could be doing all sorts of productive things in the light -- more mating, making homes, defending themselves and their babies from predators, migrating, etc etc.

Yet they need to sleep during the day. Why?

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#13

Post by erdevs »

omgitstom wrote: post #8

"Sleeping animals are incredibly vulnerable to attacks, with no obvious benefit to make up for it — at best, they waste precious hours that could be used finding food or seducing a mate; at worst, they could get eaten." It seems pretty obvious that sleep had an evolutionary advantage to conserve energy when the species couldn't be productive. For example, human sleep during the night because we can't forage / hunt /…

Many nocturnal animals have eyes and utilize vision of light. Also, many animals who wake during the day and utilize vision of light also frequently hunt at night (eg see lions during hotter seasons).

It may well be that specializing systems such that they perform well during daylight only could lead to greater advantage than maintaining additional mechanisms for performing well at night also (or vice versa), and that sleeping during the downtime in order to conserve energy might confer supplemental advantage in this scheme. But we don't know if this explains all sleep, in all species.

Even if we did, then sleep in animals which perform reasonably well at any time of day would still be unexplained. Common ancestry wherein sleep evolved earlier may explain that, but we don't have that evidence as far as I know.

As such, it doesn't seem this is quite so easy to conclude about, let alone obviously so.

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#14

Post by erdevs »

Well, this ended on quite the cliffhanger. Incredibly curious what is next discovered about this "sandman" ion channel and what it interacts with and responds to.

Additional links:

Oxford write-up which sticks more prosaicLly to the science (I imply no pejorative connotation to "prosaic", I simply mean there are fewer flourishes and asides): http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-08-03-researchers-discover-san...

Paper in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#15

Post by gnaritas »

omgitstom wrote: post #8

"Sleeping animals are incredibly vulnerable to attacks, with no obvious benefit to make up for it — at best, they waste precious hours that could be used finding food or seducing a mate; at worst, they could get eaten." It seems pretty obvious that sleep had an evolutionary advantage to conserve energy when the species couldn't be productive. For example, human sleep during the night because we can't forage / hunt /…

That doesn't seem obvious at all, it presumes sleeping is about conserving energy and that's an unwarranted assumption and baseless assumption. Sleep very well could be a requirement for brains to work they way they do. If you are deprived of sleep you will shortly go crazy; sleep isn't about saving energy.

If you see anything that seems obvious, you can bet science already checked that out and moved past it and that it's more complicated than that.

Anytime your beliefs conflict with science, you should immediately question your beliefs, not the science. The odds are absurdly high, near a virtual certainty, that your beliefs are wrong; never assume science is missing the obvious (unless you're a scientist and it's your field of study, then you might be onto something but you're still probably wrong).

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#16

Post by Florin_Andrei »

SamBam wrote: post #12
omgitstom wrote: post #8

"Sleeping animals are incredibly vulnerable to attacks, with no obvious benefit to make up for it — at best, they waste precious hours that could be used finding food or seducing a mate; at worst, they could get eaten." It seems pretty obvious that sleep had an evolutionary advantage to conserve energy when the species couldn't be productive. For example, human sleep during the night because we can't forage / hunt /…

"Pretty obvious" answers never hold up much to scrutiny, or the questions wouldn't be actively studied. Many animals are nocturnal. They eat and mate during the night, and sleep during the day. From your theory, what reason do they have to sleep during the day? They could be doing all sorts of productive things in the light -- more mating, making homes, defending themselves and their babies from predators, migrating,…

It looks like some pretty heavy optimizations are needed if you want to be successful in one of those environments (daytime vs nighttime). Visual perception has to be fine-tuned for one of those environments. Perhaps thermal regulation is different too.

So I guess one possible explanation is that too many fine-tunings are required to work well in one environment, to allow the organism to be a good performer in both. So the logical choice is to withdraw from the other environment - just don't participate.

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#17

Post by outworlder »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #5
daughart wrote: post #2

It would be great if this opened the door to sleep aids that activated the brain's natural sleep induction mechanisms, as opposed to today's sleep aids, which are basically just sedative/CNS depressant/muscle relaxers.

Well, this is what melatonin does and its OTC. My horrible insomnia was cured not by Ambien, but by .5mg of Walgreen's melatonin and even now I rarely take it. Its also probably time we admitted human beings can't fit into lifestyles where they're bombareded with blue light, stress, etc right before bedtime. The Western lifestyle is fairly anti-traditional and old fashioned things like prayer/meditation/whatever befo…

> but by .5mg of Walgreen's melatonin and even now I rarely take it

Does that require a prescription?

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#18

Post by montecarl »

outworlder wrote: post #17
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is what melatonin does and its OTC. My horrible insomnia was cured not by Ambien, but by .5mg of Walgreen's melatonin and even now I rarely take it. Its also probably time we admitted human beings can't fit into lifestyles where they're bombareded with blue light, stress, etc right before bedtime. The Western lifestyle is fairly anti-traditional and old fashioned things like prayer/meditation/whatever befo…

> but by .5mg of Walgreen's melatonin and even now I rarely take it Does that require a prescription?

You can buy melatonin in a variety of doses over the counter. Its normally near the vitamins and supplements part of the store.

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#19

Post by thanksforcoming »

SamBam wrote: post #12
omgitstom wrote: post #8

"Sleeping animals are incredibly vulnerable to attacks, with no obvious benefit to make up for it — at best, they waste precious hours that could be used finding food or seducing a mate; at worst, they could get eaten." It seems pretty obvious that sleep had an evolutionary advantage to conserve energy when the species couldn't be productive. For example, human sleep during the night because we can't forage / hunt /…

"Pretty obvious" answers never hold up much to scrutiny, or the questions wouldn't be actively studied. Many animals are nocturnal. They eat and mate during the night, and sleep during the day. From your theory, what reason do they have to sleep during the day? They could be doing all sorts of productive things in the light -- more mating, making homes, defending themselves and their babies from predators, migrating,…

The parent comment only mentioned humans being diurnal, not other animals.

There's a number of strong evolutionary forces that explain nocturnality: niche differentiation, crypsis, a predation arms-race, water conservation, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnality#Survival_adaptati...

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#20

Post by outworlder »

gnaritas wrote: post #15
omgitstom wrote: post #8

"Sleeping animals are incredibly vulnerable to attacks, with no obvious benefit to make up for it — at best, they waste precious hours that could be used finding food or seducing a mate; at worst, they could get eaten." It seems pretty obvious that sleep had an evolutionary advantage to conserve energy when the species couldn't be productive. For example, human sleep during the night because we can't forage / hunt /…

That doesn't seem obvious at all, it presumes sleeping is about conserving energy and that's an unwarranted assumption and baseless assumption. Sleep very well could be a requirement for brains to work they way they do. If you are deprived of sleep you will shortly go crazy; sleep isn't about saving energy. If you see anything that seems obvious, you can bet science already checked that out and moved past it and that…

Yeah. For starters, there is a whole bunch of toxins that build up when you don't sleep enough. But it can't be the whole story, as why wouldn't we have mechanisms to remove those and keep the brain functioning?

It can't be all about memory retention. There are some fascinating studies on how some groups of neurons repeat the same patterns they did when the organism was awake, presumedly for long-term storage. But why can't storage happen while awake?

There must be a reason why these "brain batch processes" run while most of the brain is shutdown.

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