
Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time - qwename
http://news.stanford.edu/2016/12/01/portions-brain-fall-asleep-wake-back-time-stanford-researchers-find/
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nxc18
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 implementation details.

Some examples that I remember: after a particularly long all nighter (I was a
freshman in college and wanted to try it while I could still do it by choice
and not necessity) I was editing an article I was writing for the school
magazine. I was starting to fade and realized that I couldn't read and
comprehend well-formed, meaningful sentences that I had just written.

I've noticed that when sleep deprived I notice different things and have a
more diverse set of emergent thoughts/recall events. For example, today I
noticed the plug for an electric oven at a restaurant I have not only been to
at least 100 times, but have worked at for months. I randomly remembered the
lyrics to China's five-year-plan song walking home from class. I will suddenly
remember and think fragments in Spanish, despite not touching it for years.

Truly, it appears the nature of effective cognition is _restricting_ all of
the many responses to stimuli to those that are useful and relevant, and I
think the parts of the brain that do that may have 'fallen asleep' in all
those instances.

~~~
noonespecial
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 relatively high IQ who can't read.

~~~
Shish2k
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"...

~~~
btkramer9
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...](http://qz.com/511920/a-tumor-stole-every-memory-i-had-this-is-what-
happened-when-it-all-came-back/)

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KKKKkkkk1
You know how every generation conceives of the brain as a machine that's
analogous to the latest technology of that generation? Like in the 19th
century, the brain was a steam engine, and then in the 20th it was a computer?
Well, apparently now the brain is a smartphone.

~~~
fragsworth
I'm not sure how this relates to the article?

~~~
GavinMcG
It's offering the smartphone as an analogy for the behavior described in the
article.

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j1vms
I think we are getting closer to furthering the concept that dreaming isn't
just a side-effect of thinking (or simply a defrag/clean-up routine upon the
previous day's thoughts or the mind's expectations for tomorrow). It _is_
itself the key to the thinking process, and sits above and commands the other
"agents". It helps us deal with uncertainty and lack of rationality inherent
in the universe and our incomplete understanding of it.

~~~
nxc18
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 started 'dreaming' while editing a document, the dream
being seeded by the words I was processing.)

~~~
coldtea
> _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.

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

~~~
socmag
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. That kind of stuff. Had a full story.

Noise on the line in Brain-space could still be the case, but if so we can
learn something from that noise regarding the way brain structures work.

What I'm saying is if it is just noise, then the noise must be feeding into an
entire projective area of creativity that amplifies that noise, not just
locally but over time, and in ways that maintain consistency.

Really fascinates me

~~~
Senji
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.

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jiehong
This reminds me of the Mental Modules popping in and out of existence from the
Coursera course "Buddhism and Modern Psychology", in week 4:
[https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-
meditation#syllabu...](https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-
meditation#syllabus).

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rikkus
I was recently reading my daughter a story after being woken up too early and
'half asleep'. I kept noticing that I had invented a line of text or two, and
knew that I had done this because part of my brain wasn't awake enough to
focus on or perhaps read the words on the page. So one part of my brain was
watching another invent plot or dialogue, while aware that another was
'asleep'. Other times I became aware that the story-supplementing part was not
functioning and was able to jolt myself back to a state where I could read and
recite the current line.

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pizza
Here's some amazing relevant research with so many consequences that I keep
coming back to:

Partial sleep in the context of augmentation of brain function

Abstract:

 _Inability to solve complex problems or errors in decision making is often
attributed to poor brain processing, and raises the issue of brain
augmentation. Investigation of neuronal activity in the cerebral cortex in the
sleep-wake cycle offers insights into the mechanisms underlying the reduction
in mental abilities for complex problem solving. Some cortical areas may
transit into a sleep state while an organism is still awake. Such local sleep
would reduce behavioral ability in the tasks for which the sleeping areas are
crucial. The studies of this phenomenon have indicated that local sleep
develops in high order cortical areas. This is why complex problem solving is
mostly affected by local sleep, and prevention of local sleep might be a
potential way of augmentation of brain function. For this approach to brain
augmentation not to entail negative consequences for the organism, it is
necessary to understand the functional role of sleep. Our studies have given
an unexpected answer to this question. It was shown that cortical areas that
process signals from extero- and proprioreceptors during wakefulness, switch
to the processing of interoceptive information during sleep. It became clear
that during sleep all “computational power” of the brain is directed to the
restoration of the vital functions of internal organs. These results explain
the logic behind the initiation of total and local sleep. Indeed, a mismatch
between the current parameters of any visceral system and the genetically
determined normal range would provide the feeling of tiredness, or sleep
pressure. If an environmental situation allows falling asleep, the organism
would transit to a normal total sleep in all cortical areas. However, if it is
impossible to go to sleep immediately, partial sleep may develop in some
cortical areas in the still behaviorally awake organism. This local sleep may
reduce both the “intellectual power” and the restorative function of sleep for
visceral organs._

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013465/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4013465/)

Fascinating stuff, imo. I've definitely felt the difference between partial
sleep restedness and total sleep restedness, and the idea of sleep pressure
seems to line up with my experience and with my idea of explorable,
falsifiable models of phenomena. The idea that we dream while processing
internal organ information is beautiful to me on multiple levels- maybe memory
consolidation has a whole lot to do with pre-existing organ health! Maybe
instead of the idea that we dream with only our heads, we dream with all of
our organs- just imagine how differently Jung would interpret Pauli's dreams
if he knew about this!

~~~
warfangle
I wonder if this also explains some of the benefits of meditation. While
focusing on one part of our higher functions, more areas of the brain cam slip
into this low power state, without fully entering sleep. Which is why people
feel refreshed and relaxed after a session.

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CalChris
Seems like the article misses an interesting analog in _power gating_ :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_gating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_gating)

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nitrogen
I seem to recall similar research in rats or mice that found that "sleep"
states occurred randomly when awake, and slowly synchronized into moving waves
of "sleep" when asleep. If I am indeed remembering correctly, then it would
seem more likely that this localized sleep mechanism is shared by all mammals,
including humans. I'm sure many of us have experienced cycles of awareness
while supposedly fully awake as well.

I wonder if it extends to reptiles, fish, etc.

~~~
imjustsaying
_Evidence that birds sleep in mid-flight_

[http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12468](http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12468)

~~~
Insanity
Thank you for this interesting paper!

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api
So our brains have Speedstep and are able to shut down cores to save power? :)

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

~~~
mattkevan
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.

~~~
andrewvijay
Feel you!

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iask
Seems to me that the brain is conservative on energy consumption here. The
same I apply to my hobby electronic circuitry design, i.e. turn off sensory
areas when not in use and back on as needed.

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SolaceQuantum
I would be interested to see how this relates to mental illnesses such as
ADHD, schizophrnias catatonic states, and dissociative identity disorder. But
maybe that will be another decade out.

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jngiam1
This reminds me of dropout regularization - the key idea there is to randomly
turn off units during training.

~~~
PravlageTiem
You're on to something!

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desireco42
If our brains would work fully all the time, our head would boil and explode.
I don't see how this is so new.

I am glad that functioning of the brain is understood much better. Also, this
could be utilized if we could find ways to increase focus, maybe even
artificially, well artificially until brain gets trained for full flow state
for example.

~~~
coldtea
> _If our brains would work fully all the time, our head would boil and
> explode. I don 't see how this is so new._

Citation needed.

~~~
desireco42
I was referring the energy usage of the brain. It is never all used at the
same time, just a small portion, but that doesn't mean other parts are not
used, just they are all turned on and off.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-
cal...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/)

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Nomentatus
See Carlos Casteneda and "assembling the self."

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harywilke
Dolphins put half their brains to sleep at a time.

