
The brain may actively forget during REM sleep - bookofjoe
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-actively-forget-during-dream-sleep
======
_Nat_
It's always weird to see a study reporting a hypothesis you'd always assumed
to have been established as common knowledge.

It's exploitable, too. Health concerns aside, it seems like if someone needs
to crack some really hard problem, then they might:

1\. Prepare by deep sleeping until the mind's a blank slate.

2\. Start working on the problem while avoiding deep sleep (to avoid wipes)
and extraneous information (to avoid junk that'd force you to get sleep).

3\. Upon completing the problem, thoroughly document (the mental copy's about
to get shredded), then sleep it off.

~~~
SamReidHughes
I think the common understanding is the opposite. That you are better off
thinking about the problem 4 hours today and 4 hours tomorrow, than 8 hours
today.

~~~
hombre_fatal
You'll notice it's just a common way to flex on HN.

"Oh, heh, cute that scientists need to confirm what's clearly obvious to me."
Often with an anecdote about how they've always known it, and with an
explanation about how it works (obviously) which you think would be
unnecessary if it was such common knowledge.

~~~
LeftHandPath
It's partly a flex but I think it's a common experience. There are lots of
things that the kinds of people who are on this site - for the most part,
intelligent people - will pick up on subconsciously.

When we realize it's not common knowledge, we get excited and/or become proud
of ourselves, and explain what we think to indulge ourselves (because we were
just given evidence that the knowledge isn't as common as we thought).

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sudosteph
The key seems to be the activation of MCH during REM rather than REM itself.

I wonder if MCH plays a role in memory impairment caused by frequent cannabis
usage. It is also related to appetite enhancement, and I saw at least one
study saying cannabinoids stimulate MCH. [1]

The REM connection is especially interesting - because as many long-term
cannabis users will tell you, you usually stop dreaming after a while of use.
If you stop again though, dreams often come back with a vengeance. Studies say
this is due to REM impairment and then REM rebound after stopping [2]. I'm
totally spit-balling, but it makes me wonder if it's possible the REM changes
long-term stoners experience could be from your body trying to regulate a
overload of MCH.

[1]
[https://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/18/4870](https://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/18/4870)

[2][http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/178475](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/178475)

~~~
sysbin
Interestingly dreams return after shortly stopping cannabis but more
fascinating is how the dreams that come back will be in nightmare form. I've
experienced this outcome and I've seen it reported online by other users.
Maybe anecdotal but I find it peculiarly odd of false because the outcome has
happened several times.

~~~
wolco
I would say more vivid but not necessarily nightmares

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jakelazaroff
Tangentially related, but I always thought this scene from Inside Out was such
a clever personication of memory:
[https://youtu.be/E9NMUGhJ7FE](https://youtu.be/E9NMUGhJ7FE)

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bitwize
Sleep is one hell of a GC pause. If our brain firmware were written in Rust,
how much of that time could we get back?

~~~
freddie_mercury
This is almost certainly the wrong metaphor, since there aren't really any
instances of animals that are always awake, which seems like an obvious
competitive advantage.

A better metaphor is probably that the brain is normally run like a heavily
overclocked CPU & with insufficient cooling, so it needs to be turned off
frequently to cool down.

So "getting rid of the pause" wouldn't result in getting back time but in
melting down the chip.

~~~
mamon
As far as I know sharks solved it: only part of their brain sleeps at time,
allowing them to be on the move constantly. I wish human could do that :)

~~~
maze-le
Some bird species too (Albatross, Penguins). I sometimes think that meditation
could be a state of mind like this: parts of the brain awoke, parts of it
asleep. With the caveat that meditation isn't really very restful, but
demanding on its own.

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LiamPa
Strongly recommend reading ‘Why we sleep’ if you want to learn more about rem
/ nrem, it’s fascinating how little we know.

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irrational
To the best of my knowledge, I've never dreamed. On waking I have no memory of
anything happening after falling asleep. I wonder if I experience more REM
sleep than those people who do dream (or at least remember their dreams upon
waking up).

~~~
shadowmore
Everyone dreams, but dream recall varies from day to day and from person to
person. But there are a number of ways to improve it.

For instance, getting into the habit of introspecting your own thoughts the
moment you realize you're awake -- you'll find that some of what seem like
random things you're thinking about upon waking up are actually strands of
whatever dream you were having in the last REM cycle before waking up, and if
you practice pulling on those strands, you'll find that your recall improves
over time.

There are also affirmations that can help. Literally telling yourself that
you'll remember your dreams as you try and fall asleep, which implants a
subconscious intent that helps create better recall.

I looked into this years ago when looking into inducing lucid dreams, and I
can say from personal experience the various methods for getting more in touch
with your dreams do work. It's just a question of whether you can be bothered
to put in the effort and feel the reward is worth it.

~~~
irrational
I'm nearly 50 years old. You would think that if I could remember my dreams
there would've been at least 1 time in the 18,000+ times I've slept in my
lifetime that I would've remembered something, anything upon awakening.
Anyway, not dreaming doesn't bother me, so I don't really have any incentive
to try. Though I am a bit curious as to why I don't dream or remember that
I've dreamed. But not curious enough to expend any energy on it ;-)

~~~
vekker
> But not curious enough to expend any energy on it

and that's exactly why you miss out on nightly dreams!

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idclip
check out vipassana and brain thickness increases during mentation and
selective neural pathway elimination.

Too.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541490/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541490/)

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segfaultbuserr
Like a NAND flash array, needs to run fsck, scrub, and GC periodically.

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transfire
It's an old theory... REM, nature's GC.

