Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
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Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
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Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
#2Is anyone more knowledgeable able to interpret the paper beyond ‘brain waves wash toxins’?
Are they actually responsible for the observed activity, or do they merely trigger some ‘flushing’ mechanism inherent to the cells? Or, are the waves a result of that process?
Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
#3More details at Washington Univ' site: https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/neurons-help-flush-waste-out...
Could not find any free access to the paper, even though the Univ' says "This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH); the BJC Investigators Program at Washington University; and the Neuroscience Innovation Foundation."
These kind of grant funded research should be accessible at the least from the Univ' websites.
Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
#4Is anyone more knowledgeable able to interpret the paper beyond ‘brain waves wash toxins’? Are they actually responsible for the observed activity, or do they merely trigger some ‘flushing’ mechanism inherent to the cells? Or, are the waves a result of that process?
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could periodically trigger waves like this to refresh the brain and maybe require less (or no) sleep!
I have no expertise in this area I’m just a dreamer :)
Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
#5Is anyone more knowledgeable able to interpret the paper beyond ‘brain waves wash toxins’? Are they actually responsible for the observed activity, or do they merely trigger some ‘flushing’ mechanism inherent to the cells? Or, are the waves a result of that process?
I can't find free access to the full paper, but here's the abstract (afraid I'm not knowledgeable enough to add to or explain any of it):
"The accumulation of metabolic waste is a leading cause of numerous neurological disorders, yet we still have only limited knowledge of how the brain performs self-cleansing. Here we demonstrate that neural networks synchronize individual action potentials to create large-amplitude, rhythmic and self-perpetuating ionic waves in the interstitial fluid of the brain. These waves are a plausible mechanism to explain the correlated potentiation of the glymphatic flow1,2 through the brain parenchyma. Chemogenetic flattening of these high-energy ionic waves largely impeded cerebrospinal fluid infiltration into and clearance of molecules from the brain parenchyma. Notably, synthesized waves generated through transcranial optogenetic stimulation substantially potentiated cerebrospinal fluid-to-interstitial fluid perfusion. Our study demonstrates that neurons serve as master organizers for brain clearance. This fundamental principle introduces a new theoretical framework for the functioning of macroscopic brain waves."
Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
#6Is anyone more knowledgeable able to interpret the paper beyond ‘brain waves wash toxins’? Are they actually responsible for the observed activity, or do they merely trigger some ‘flushing’ mechanism inherent to the cells? Or, are the waves a result of that process?
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could periodically trigger waves like this to refresh the brain and maybe require less (or no) sleep! I have no expertise in this area I’m just a dreamer :)
Dreamers have no problems here :)
Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
#7Is this news? Lookup glynphatic system. I thought it was known that it flushes out waste products during sleep.
Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
#8So garbage collection is not such a bad idea after all...
Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
#9So, if we could induce those brain waves we wouldn't need sleep? Maybe in the future our AirPods will have a "rejuvenate" feature which plays tones that cause sleep like brain waves to go through and clean out our neurons.
Probably not... I think our brains are like LLMs. We train them on sensory input we perceive over time, building up a data model that is unique to us. The models may generate similar results, but each person's brains are wired as differently as the raw binary data stored in ChatGPT vs Llama or Gemini. Thus the cleaning mechanism is probably unique per person as well.
But I don't really have a clue. It's just a logical inference.
Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
#10Is anyone more knowledgeable able to interpret the paper beyond ‘brain waves wash toxins’? Are they actually responsible for the observed activity, or do they merely trigger some ‘flushing’ mechanism inherent to the cells? Or, are the waves a result of that process?
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could periodically trigger waves like this to refresh the brain and maybe require less (or no) sleep! I have no expertise in this area I’m just a dreamer :)
For companies it'd be a dream. 1/4 more awake time is 1/4 more time to buy stuff and watch content and ads. Or work longer hours. Gonna go back to sleep now.