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Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

nature.com

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

#21

Post by morkalork »

lizknope wrote: post #10
trollbridge wrote: post #5

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…

Wasn't there supposed to be a smart watch out there you could set a window of time you wanted to wake up like "between 6:30 and 7:00" where it would use the sleep tracking to pick the optimal time to wake you up like at the end of a REM cycle? I feel like I must have hallucinated this because I'm wearing a smart watch (fitbit) now and no such feature exists.

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

#22

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

trollbridge wrote: post #5

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.

My wife needs 8-9 hours, whereas I can get by just fine with 5-6. She is a very light sleeper who will wake up 3-4 times every night; I can sleep through almost any noise, and never get up in the middle of the night. My son takes after me -- he seems to need significantly less sleep than other kids his age, but he's an extraordinarily deep sleeper.

Anecdotal, but I think that sleep depth might have something to do with it.

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

#23

Post by [deleted] »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #19
foobarian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of animals are nocturnal, diurnal, or sleep in non-24h windows. Evolution does whatever works.

[deleted]

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

#24

Post by danenania »

api wrote: post #17

Whatever sleep does, it's something nature has had a tough time optimizing out despite the extreme vulnerability it creates and the sacrifice of a little under half an organism's waking time. That should tell us it's something incredibly important that's hard to do any other way. Edit: on the other hand... if Earth had two suns and rarely had periods of darkness, you wonder if maybe there would have been more evoluti…

Sleep is vulnerable, but it also keeps you curled up and hidden somewhere rather than out in the open walking around and taking risks.

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

#25

Post by esafak »

So you can concentrate your energy on maintenance tasks, like memory consolidation and physical restoration, during the down time during which it is cold and dark -- when you can't effectively hunt and stay warm. If you did not do that, you would have to constantly allocate some energy towards these tasks, at the expense of more urgent ones. And the higher up you are in the food chain, the less risky it is to rest.

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

#26

Post by jader201 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #22
trollbridge wrote: post #5

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.

My wife needs 8-9 hours, whereas I can get by just fine with 5-6. She is a very light sleeper who will wake up 3-4 times every night; I can sleep through almost any noise, and never get up in the middle of the night. My son takes after me -- he seems to need significantly less sleep than other kids his age, but he's an extraordinarily deep sleeper. Anecdotal, but I think that sleep depth might have something to do wi…

I used to get by fine with 5-6 hours, too, until I started getting 7-8 and realized how much better I feel.

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

#27

Post by esperent »

morkalork wrote: post #21
lizknope wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wasn't there supposed to be a smart watch out there you could set a window of time you wanted to wake up like "between 6:30 and 7:00" where it would use the sleep tracking to pick the optimal time to wake you up like at the end of a REM cycle? I feel like I must have hallucinated this because I'm wearing a smart watch (fitbit) now and no such feature exists.

It's an app that uses data from your watch, the name is something like sleep cycle.

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

#28

Post by LPisGood »

parpfish wrote: post #8
sylware wrote: 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.

It’s less “hallucination” and more “confabulation”

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

#29

Post by swatcoder »

api wrote: post #17

Whatever sleep does, it's something nature has had a tough time optimizing out despite the extreme vulnerability it creates and the sacrifice of a little under half an organism's waking time. That should tell us it's something incredibly important that's hard to do any other way. Edit: on the other hand... if Earth had two suns and rarely had periods of darkness, you wonder if maybe there would have been more evoluti…

Alternately, sleep is the optimal ultra-high-efficiency survival state and wakefulness only exists to give creatures enough time to get their affairs in order so that they can safely return to dormancy.

It's easy to think of sleep as a compromise to be defeated because we're culturally preoccupied with the achievements and pleasures of wakefulness, but that's really just us claiming personal preference for one narrow part of a holistic system that's just doing its own survival and propagation thing.

Consider trees, mushrooms, cicadas, snakes, or cats. Chilling out in low power mode as much is possible is maybe not a error to be fixed so much as it is an outcome of efficient design.

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

#30

Post by rorytbyrne »

morkalork wrote: post #21
lizknope wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wasn't there supposed to be a smart watch out there you could set a window of time you wanted to wake up like "between 6:30 and 7:00" where it would use the sleep tracking to pick the optimal time to wake you up like at the end of a REM cycle? I feel like I must have hallucinated this because I'm wearing a smart watch (fitbit) now and no such feature exists.

Apple Watch does this.
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