The actual research is quite interesting. Sleep disorders themselves are fascinating. There is evidence that TBI (traumatic brain injury) can cause lasting sleep cycle disruption. Perhaps sleep disruption and TBI is a much bigger factor in the lasting impact of TBI than previously thought.<p>(<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3482689/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3482689/</a>).<p>Article review: This is pretty good science reporting, actually providing a link to the study being referenced. My one nit is the use of the word "Toxins". That is a trigger word for me that immediately makes me suspicious of the reporting. Scientific papers about the human body very rarely if ever use the word "Toxins" preferring precise terminology such as "brain waste products" or just keeping to the chemical names at hand. "Toxins" is one of those normative layman words that gets used to sweep up all sorts of ill-conceived explanations and pseudo-science.
> The process is important because what's getting washed away during sleep are waste proteins that are toxic to brain cells, Nedergaard says.<p>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.<p>This could be interesting for future research. Could we find chemical means to remove those waste proteins?
Maybe looking for the reason we sleep is the wrong way to look at it? What if being asleep is the default state for any organism?<p>Sleeping require much less energy. The only reason to be awake is to eat and reproduce. For any animal there is probably an optimal ratio between sleep and hunt/reproduction where sleep is the most favorable.
A related and quite recent piece of research - Stimulating toxin cleanup via brain stimulation using pulsed light. Has been used to treat Alzheimer symptoms in mice models. Last I heard was being fast-tracked to humans.<p><a href="http://news.mit.edu/2016/visual-stimulation-treatment-alzheimer-1207" rel="nofollow">http://news.mit.edu/2016/visual-stimulation-treatment-alzhei...</a><p>"This treatment appears to work by inducing brain waves known as gamma oscillations, which the researchers discovered help the brain suppress beta amyloid production and invigorate cells responsible for destroying the plaques."
My alma mater has a saying: "sleep is for the weak". If you go to a university with that slogan, here is one more reason why it is foolish.<p>If you want to learn effectively and work efficiently, take care of your body and take care of your brain.
There's already research that being sleep-deprived has similar cognitive effects to being drunk, especially with regards to driving safety. This new result implies that may be more than a coincidence, as the biological underpinnings may be similar.
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?
I learned about this from the Learning how to learn class on Coursera. Can't recommend it enough. <a href="https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn" rel="nofollow">https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn</a>
It always amazes me to read articles like this. How come I don't need more than 3 hours of sleep a day and its been like that for over 15 years now?<p>I sleep "late hours". I go sleep around 8am and wake up around noon. I don't eat breakfast just coffee. I work most of the day on different projects, eat quite large dinner at 8pm, then every day go for 45 min to the gym, around 10pm and then 20 min walk. After that its about midnight and I start working. I don't get tired until 5am but then 2 glasses of water "wake me up". By 8am I'm in bed truly tired.<p>I been running this schedule for 15 years now, no symptoms of nothing. I don't smoke and don't drink btw. I barely watch TV (never found anything interesting; I take breaks on my PC watching some travel-related documentaries)<p>Edit: perhaps once a month I feel truly tired and usually on the weekend, I tend to sleep about 8-10 hours. But that doesn't happen often.
I'd be very surprised if it turns out that there's not a major "computational" element to sleep. Sure, it may be difficult to circulate fluid through a waken beings brain, but I think evolution could have managed. If the "computational resource" is needed for something else though (like running backprop over your neural networks or something :P)... That to me is the only reasonable explanation for the huge evolutionary cost most creatures pay for sleep.
It's interesting that in almost every sleep related article I've read on HN, the overwhelming majority of people who respond about their personal life say that they hate getting up 'early'-for various definitions of early. Surely there are programmers who like getting up early?
IIRC the story Manhole 69 by JG Ballard references a requirement to divert neurotoxins in men whose sleep centres were disconnected/cauterised.<p>Ballard I presumed was just speculating. But based on his relatively high level of scientific knowledge I imagined it was rooted in some sort of real world science.<p>That story was written in the 1960s...so has the state of research on this remained slow or was Ballard just making a lucky guess?
<i>Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.</i><p>s/technology/science<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws</a><p>At some point, people on HN will get over their fear of words like "toxins" and embrace the Tao Te Woo as the advanced science it is.
I have heard of at least three believable theories of why we sleep.<p>- To turn short term memory into long term memory, to consolidate long term memory, and prepare the brain to learn new things.<p>- To clean the brain of harmful waste products (which is what this article says. By the way, it is old and from 2013).<p>- An evolutionary artifact of energy conservation in resource-low ecosystems.<p>Are there some other theories too?
I'm currently reading Arianna Huffington's "The Sleep Revolution". If you're interested in more stuff like this, it's pretty good. It's definitely made me more mindful of winding down and night and getting plenty of sleep.<p>One thing in particular that stood out is the rise in cortisol associated with lack-of-sleep, and cortisol's relationship to gaining fat; having hit a couple of rocky weeks sleep due to young kids at home, this was particularly relevant to me.<p>I now rank sleep as pinnacle in terms of health / fitness training, mental well-being, creativity, etc.
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
I thought this was already common knowledge? I remember reading about this about 3 years ago.<p>Specifically in this article about coffee naps <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/8/28/6074177/coffee-naps-caffeine-science" rel="nofollow">http://www.vox.com/2014/8/28/6074177/coffee-naps-caffeine-sc...</a> which links to this Harvard article: <a href="http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/why-do-we-sleep" rel="nofollow">http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits...</a>
Learned about this few years ago here is the link<p><a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_iliff_one_more_reason_to_get_a_good_night_s_sleep" rel="nofollow">https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_iliff_one_more_reason_to_get_...</a>