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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

#101

That's a really interesting scientific finding. From a personal experience, once I closed my eyes and actually observed this phenomenon. I could observe many spherical waves of light each pulsating, and not only that but I could feel the effect of each wave viscerally. It definitely felt healing. I wasn't sure what this was, was it the vibes of meditators around the world? Maybe this research finding is what I was ob…

Reflexively, that doesn't make sense. I cannot imagine perceiving ionic CSF flow with my eyes.

But thinking about it more, maybe there is something to it? I'm wholly unqualified to speculate here, but I know computers and computers are exactly the same as everything in the real world, so let's go! ...

- When restful and with my eyes closed, I definitely "see" waves move across my field of vision. My eyes see "black" (or dark gray) with slightly lighter edges that move and act like a wavefront in a fluid. There's distinct flow, and (minor) swirling and interference. I've seen these since I was very young, and I have no idea if it's a common thing or if it has a name. It must. I've mentioned it to a very small number of other non-experts but no one has ever recognized it. (I also sometimes see tiny colored tiles that light up in moving masses -- again rarely mentioned but never recognized, probably an unrelated phenomenon...)

- I do not think these are simply phosphenes, because there is no external proximate stimuli. Though I suppose we all live in environments saturated with EMF, most of the time, and a proper test would require being in a very remote area (and that's probably not enough). Though if I can "see" the presence of EMF, I'm totally making some phone calls to Charles Xavier's people.

- I've theorized that this was fluid in my eye (eyelid is too thin) moving around and refracting what little light is getting through in a dark room. But it also happens when I am completely still (though nothing in the body is ever completely still), and it also happens in complete darkness.

- The "shape" of the waves does not resemble anything that could be related to blood vessels in the eyelid. And again, complete darkness.

- So, is it possible that it's actually this ionic flow of CSF through the vision-sensing part of the brain? Not actually light coming through my eyeballs at all, but fluidlike electrical variations in the parts of the brain itself which are sensitive to the electrical signals normally coming from the optic nerves?

I have no idea. But it's an fun new angle to consider in the idle moments while I watch the waves flow before I fall asleep.

(That said, please feel free to correct my wild speculation if there's an obvious explanation that has not intersected my completely-unrelated fields of study! :)

Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice

#102
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checked and it was published through Nature: Jiang-Xie, LF., Drieu, A., Bhasiin, K. et al. Neuronal dynamics direct cerebrospinal fluid perfusion and brain clearance. Nature 627, 157–164 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07108-6 Every Uni should have access through your library system.

I think the point was that every member of the public should have access to publicly funded research at least through the university's website, rather than at least everyone currently in universities should have access.

I agree publicly funded research should not be siloed in anyway and should be in the public domain.

Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice

#103

Notably, synthesized waves generated through transcranial optogenetic stimulation substantially potentiated cerebrospinal fluid-to-interstitial fluid perfusion. No wonder Musk is interested in this area of research. This line indicates that with an optigenetic implant you can substitute sleep with something more efficient.

I'm sorry but your comment is incredibly I'll informed. Not only because you think Musk is any where near the leader in the implant space, but more so that you don't understand optogenetics. The device referenced here was transcranial (i.e., non-invasive) but regardless optogenetics requires tagging specific neurons with an opsin (usually via viral vector). I'm sorry for being curt but this is the 4th or 5th neurosci…

HN is great but it's only illusory that it has smarter people than Reddit. We're all just people rising to our incompetence to the limit the system allows.

Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice

#104

Notably, synthesized waves generated through transcranial optogenetic stimulation substantially potentiated cerebrospinal fluid-to-interstitial fluid perfusion. No wonder Musk is interested in this area of research. This line indicates that with an optigenetic implant you can substitute sleep with something more efficient.

I'm sorry but your comment is incredibly I'll informed. Not only because you think Musk is any where near the leader in the implant space, but more so that you don't understand optogenetics. The device referenced here was transcranial (i.e., non-invasive) but regardless optogenetics requires tagging specific neurons with an opsin (usually via viral vector). I'm sorry for being curt but this is the 4th or 5th neurosci…

I am very aware how optogenetics works, I wasted some part of my live getting channelrhodopsins into cells to trigger neurons.

Yes you are right one would probably use transient gene therapy tho make a modification like that, but transcranial methods are afaik for human adults less suitable since the structures lying above the stuff you usually want to stimulate are simply too thick, so a hypothetical sleep replacement machine would probably need to be an implant. That is unless you can use self-refocusing lasers or holograms for stimulation, but I do not see how one would do this unless you replace most of the skull with glass.

The point with Musk was a joke more or less.

Though it’s true that he is probably the only person both morally ambiguous enough to even try to build a dystopian sleep replacement machine and capable of getting funding for it.

Maybe a Reddit account is a good idea.

Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice

#105
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not dreaming that is tedious. My understanding is that the brain always dream but that you only remember your dreams if you wake up during them. So, remembering 4-6 dreams would mean that you wake up (probably unconsciously) multiple times per night. It’s probably what is tiring rather than the dream itself. Disclaimer : I have no source and I may be wrong. It’s my understanding.

I don’t feel physically tired in the mornings. I ran in high school 8-10 miles a day and would collapse, waking up dream free. Now I wake up refreshed but I’m sick of watching the same rehashed combinations of dreams. I can do lucid dreaming, but I’d just rather not dream at all

You always dream. That's the thing. Unless something is seriously wrong you dream every night. You might not want to remember them but you'll dream all the same.

Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice

#106
post #3

More 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…

All NIH funded research is freely open access by law.

In this case it seems the authors didn’t pay the (crazy expensive) Nature open access fee. They will have to upload a free PDF to PubMed manually, but have up to a year to do so, and don’t seem to have done it yet.

Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand correctly, for most publishers you are allowed to host a copy on your personal web as well as the university library catalog?

AFAIK, this comes with distribution limitations like to your department and students in the university. There's an exception for arXiv generally for publishing intermediate revisions, but not the final one. Elsevier has a nice summary at [0]. At the bottom there's "Publicly share the final published article". It's "YES" for Open Access and "NO" for subscription (classical) model. There's a rather detailed "Scholarly…

Never knew this before! Thanks for sharing.

Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice

#108
I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about six months ago. Once I started getting treatment for it (losing weight, cutting out caffeine, and an oral appliance) my life started getting dramatically better.

I had never taken sleep very seriously prior to that and I feel extremely foolish for it. Life is 100x better if you get an appropriate amount of sleep. Everything becomes a little easier.

Re: Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice

#109

I immediately start to think about the effect of smartphone related waves in the room while sleeping.

Brain waves are approximately in the 1hz to 100hz range. While smartphone waves are much higher frequency. AC however is 50/60hz depending on country. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but I have a thick wire that runs right next to the natural spot for my pillow I very intentionally put the pillow on the other side of the bed.
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