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Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

nature.com

1–10 of 188 posts

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#4
I'm not a neuroscientist, but it's hard to understand why anyone thinks that this mandatory downtime for all animals is just for a special reason. Why wouldn't sleeping be a catch-all window for autonomous maintenance and overall survival? Always take the most likely reason.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#6

I'm not a neuroscientist, but it's hard to understand why anyone thinks that this mandatory downtime for all animals is just for a special reason. Why wouldn't sleeping be a catch-all window for autonomous maintenance and overall survival? Always take the most likely reason.

It seems that given the options of 1) staying awake and active as normal during the night and 2) using the night period to run various maintenance task but without awareness the second option apparently turned out to be the winner as far as evolution is concerned.

What's interesting to me is how many animals beyond humans do it - so it's not purely tied to the human cognitive functions like higher order thinking etc.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#7

I'm not a neuroscientist, but it's hard to understand why anyone thinks that this mandatory downtime for all animals is just for a special reason. Why wouldn't sleeping be a catch-all window for autonomous maintenance and overall survival? Always take the most likely reason.

The way dolphins sleep with half of their brain asleep is fascinating to me.

https://us.whales.org/whales-dolphins/how-do-dolphins-sleep/

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#8
post #2

Extreme Sleep deprived people did hallucinate. Nature may give us some hints to improve "AI" reliability.

It was a mistake to use the term “hallucinate” in AI. It’s a decent metaphor but it’s best to avoid terms prone to anthropomorphism.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#9

I'm not a neuroscientist, but it's hard to understand why anyone thinks that this mandatory downtime for all animals is just for a special reason. Why wouldn't sleeping be a catch-all window for autonomous maintenance and overall survival? Always take the most likely reason.

Isn’t that the crux of the question? Figuring out what all the maintenance stuff our bodies need to do every night and how it works seems useful

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#10

Some people seem to need a lot less sleep than others with no deleterious health effects. It would be very interesting to find out why.

I haven't used an alarm clock in 20 years and wake up within the same 5-10 minute window almost every day.

I have a friend that will just sleep through multiple alarms. But he can also just fall asleep in 10 minutes on an airplane and I can't sleep at all on a plane. He also takes lots of naps and I never take a nap unless I'm sick.

The worst feeling to me is waking up from some external noise. I just feel so groggy afterword. My body will feel better after 5 hours of sleep and I just wake up naturally compared to 5 hours, go back to sleep for 2 hours, and get woken up during the wrong time (middle of REM cycle?) and then I feel tired for the whole day even though I got more sleep.

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