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Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

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Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#81

Post by Shish2k »

noonespecial wrote: post #66
nxc18 wrote: post #20

Taking some time to reflect on and consider my own thinking behavior has been interesting. Just like exploring any other system, subjecting myself to sleep stress (in order to meet aggressive deadlines) has allowed me to see what happens when certain things fail, revealing functional boundaries. I see it as kind of analogous to when you starve a circuit/device of power - it behaves in unexpected ways, revealing imple…

I have migraines and every once in a blue moon I get a very interesting symptom along with it. Fully awake and cognizant I simply lose the ability to read. Even Dick and Jane become nearly insurmountable. It happens even before the pain and aura arrive, I'm fully functional, just suddenly illiterate. Its the damndest thing. It's only for a few minutes but I know what it's like to be a fully grown adult with a relativ…

I find migraines like that to be quite fun (at least from the second time, after I spoke to a doctor and learned that there was no permenant damage). In my case I totally lose my short-term memory :D

The weird thing is that after the migraine is over I can actually remember most of what happened during it, so somehow things are still finding their way into my long term memory - though it's mostly just conversations like "hey, I'm having a migraine, I'm going to lie down for a few minutes, because I'm having a migraine, it's affecting my memory, so I'm going to lie down, I think this migraine is affecting my memory" "ok dude, take a break" "woah, how did you know I need a break? I was just thinking that I should take a break, because I'm having a migraine, and it's probably affecting my memory. Did you know I get migraines that affect my memory? I should probably go lie down"...

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#82

Post by noonespecial »

vorotato wrote: post #78
noonespecial wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have migraines and every once in a blue moon I get a very interesting symptom along with it. Fully awake and cognizant I simply lose the ability to read. Even Dick and Jane become nearly insurmountable. It happens even before the pain and aura arrive, I'm fully functional, just suddenly illiterate. Its the damndest thing. It's only for a few minutes but I know what it's like to be a fully grown adult with a relativ…

I have the same thing when I have migraines. Apparently it can be a symptom? It's like I can see the words but I can't make sense of what they mean.

This is exactly what happens. The strange thing is I can still do math perfectly, just not read text. I have this little "proof of work" thing I do (usually to figure out how drunk I am!) where I derive Kirchhoff's laws from Faraday's law (a hold-over from my EE degree). I can do this just fine but I can't read beyond sounding out words like a 1st grader and even when I do that, I can't tell you what the sentence meant when I'm finished. Odder still, I can write text and then can't read what I just wrote!

The longest its ever lasted was about 1.5 hours. Usually about the time the freight-train of pain arrives, everything goes back to normal. Of course then I'm in no mood to read anything anyway.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#83

Post by Shish2k »

coldtea wrote: post #22
nxc18 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this obsession with the "purpose" of dreaming. As far as I have experienced its just noise on the wire that we sometimes are conscious enough to recognize. Having spent enough time in extremely sleep-deprived states for projects recently, I've experienced firsthand a lot of funky stuff going on (e.g. falling asleep and waking up with a full page of class notes in front of me, or realizing that I've…

> As far as I have experienced its just noise on the wire that we sometimes are conscious enough to recognize. If it was actual noise it would have absolute minimal statistical chance of having any coherent structure.

Actual noise with no coherent structure is enough for the brain to start imagining patterns - can confirm that having tried it myself, with white noise in my eyes and ears for half an hour, I ended up having dream-like hallucinations while awake:

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

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#84

Post by Senji »

noonespecial wrote: post #82
vorotato wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same thing when I have migraines. Apparently it can be a symptom? It's like I can see the words but I can't make sense of what they mean.

This is exactly what happens. The strange thing is I can still do math perfectly, just not read text. I have this little "proof of work" thing I do (usually to figure out how drunk I am!) where I derive Kirchhoff's laws from Faraday's law (a hold-over from my EE degree). I can do this just fine but I can't read beyond sounding out words like a 1st grader and even when I do that, I can't tell you what the sentence mea…

Can you recognize letters? Try adding up the letters-as-numbers in each word.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#85

Post by Senji »

talideon wrote: post #53
stephengillie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brain is a network of routers.

The brain is a series of tubes.

I just the other day got … a thought that was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Brain commercially ... They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Brain.

The brain is not just something you dump things on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your thought in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#86

Post by Senji »

socmag wrote: post #72
FeepingCreature wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's noise in brainspace, which is already structured.

I have lucid dreams almost every night now. I'm talking about entire story arcs with plot twists. Last nights had Donald Trump, my wife and Jennifer Love Hewitt. There were riots going on and people reading newspapers with moving video ink. There was an old book called "The Fall" that was filled with fascinating ink drawings of ritualistic acts (eg: a man sat cross legged on broken fragments of his own arms). Etc. Th…

I'm seconding the story/plot elements.

I've had some dreams like short sci-fi stories. Some with time travel/causality loop tangles as plot. Some with twists. Complex character and places.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#87

Post by stordoff »

noonespecial wrote: post #66
nxc18 wrote: post #20

Taking some time to reflect on and consider my own thinking behavior has been interesting. Just like exploring any other system, subjecting myself to sleep stress (in order to meet aggressive deadlines) has allowed me to see what happens when certain things fail, revealing functional boundaries. I see it as kind of analogous to when you starve a circuit/device of power - it behaves in unexpected ways, revealing imple…

I have migraines and every once in a blue moon I get a very interesting symptom along with it. Fully awake and cognizant I simply lose the ability to read. Even Dick and Jane become nearly insurmountable. It happens even before the pain and aura arrive, I'm fully functional, just suddenly illiterate. Its the damndest thing. It's only for a few minutes but I know what it's like to be a fully grown adult with a relativ…

I have something vaguely similar when my migraine-like[1] headaches are at their worst - some words just look wrong, even when I'm 100% certain the world is spelt correctly. It's an odd feeling, made especially weird as when that is happening I find Japanese kana much easier to read, which is normally something I find rather difficult.

[1] Not formally diagnosed as migraines (migraines don't typically cause a single headache that never goes away for years, but just fluctuates in intensity), but my sister has been so I suspect there is a link.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#88

Post by btkramer9 »

Shish2k wrote: post #81
noonespecial wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have migraines and every once in a blue moon I get a very interesting symptom along with it. Fully awake and cognizant I simply lose the ability to read. Even Dick and Jane become nearly insurmountable. It happens even before the pain and aura arrive, I'm fully functional, just suddenly illiterate. Its the damndest thing. It's only for a few minutes but I know what it's like to be a fully grown adult with a relativ…

I find migraines like that to be quite fun (at least from the second time, after I spoke to a doctor and learned that there was no permenant damage). In my case I totally lose my short-term memory :D The weird thing is that after the migraine is over I can actually remember most of what happened during it, so somehow things are still finding their way into my long term memory - though it's mostly just conversations l…

This reminds me of an article I read a while back [1]. He had years of memories come back that he was never able to remember before the surgery.

[1] http://qz.com/511920/a-tumor-stole-every-memory-i-had-this-i...

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#89

Post by DougWebb »

noonespecial wrote: post #66
nxc18 wrote: post #20

Taking some time to reflect on and consider my own thinking behavior has been interesting. Just like exploring any other system, subjecting myself to sleep stress (in order to meet aggressive deadlines) has allowed me to see what happens when certain things fail, revealing functional boundaries. I see it as kind of analogous to when you starve a circuit/device of power - it behaves in unexpected ways, revealing imple…

I have migraines and every once in a blue moon I get a very interesting symptom along with it. Fully awake and cognizant I simply lose the ability to read. Even Dick and Jane become nearly insurmountable. It happens even before the pain and aura arrive, I'm fully functional, just suddenly illiterate. Its the damndest thing. It's only for a few minutes but I know what it's like to be a fully grown adult with a relativ…

What you and the people replying to you are describing sounds a lot like what happens when you try to read during a dream: you just can't. If you look at text while dreaming you recognize the words but they don't make any sense, and if you look away and then back at them they'll all be different. Looking out for this is one of the techniques for recognizing the dream state and getting into a lucid dream.

Perhaps your migraines sometimes trigger a waking dream state, or something functionally equivalent, where you're still seeing the real world instead of one your mind has created, but parts of your brain that are used to interpret your sensory input have switched to dream-mode.

Re: Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time

#90

Post by andrewvijay »

mattkevan wrote: post #57
andrewvijay wrote: post #35

Looks like my brain does full shutdown whenever there's an interview

Ha! Came here to say something similar. For me it's in meetings or when someone's telling me a vital piece of information I must remember.

Feel you!
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