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Brains Sweep Themselves Clean of Toxins During Sleep (2013)

npr.org

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Re: Brains Sweep Themselves Clean of Toxins During Sleep (2013)

#3
> The process is important because what's getting washed away during sleep are waste proteins that are toxic to brain cells, Nedergaard says.

Evolution found a nice little optimum in sleep that works pretty well- use less energy during a time of the day that isn't a very efficient time to be awake while also cleaning out the brain.

This could be interesting for future research. Could we find chemical means to remove those waste proteins?

Re: Brains Sweep Themselves Clean of Toxins During Sleep (2013)

#7
Wild analogy.... Inference machines cleanup the neutral model itself when put to relax. Wait, are there any Neural Nets out there, which produce toxic "weights" to be discarded later, If not than we are far from copying the real glucose based neural networks. /Imagination

Re: Brains Sweep Themselves Clean of Toxins During Sleep (2013)

#10

Random thought: Could dreams be a result of the processing of toxins? In the same way some "toxins" cause us to hallucinate etc. so too could these toxins, as a side affect of processing?

>The team discovered that this increased flow was possible in part because when mice went to sleep, their brain cells actually shrank, making it easier for fluid to circulate.

It could be that the brain needs to fire up for short periods in order to help pump the increased fluid out to prepare for another rinse.

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