
Memory recall dependent on gene influencing hippocampus-based circadian clock - bookofjoe
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13554-y
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S_A_P
Perhaps my thinking is flawed and grossly oversimplified here. Doesn't this
just seem to line up with brain chemistry and how everything seems to work in
the brain? When I drink a coffee, caffeine inhibits adenosine from
accumulating in the brain which makes me feel more "awake". Eventually that
chemical wears off and I start to get sleepy. I would imagine much like mood
memory recall is dependent on some chemical in the brain, of which there is a
limited supply. Sleep allows for cleaning and regeneration of said supplies.

What if its not because of the time of day, its just that once you've been
awake for a certain number of hours your brain is running on empty until you
sleep again? If you had folks working(and acclimated to) the graveyard shift I
would expect similar results on memory recall but in the morning hours.

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grawprog
>If you had folks working(and acclimated to) the graveyard shift I would
expect similar results on memory recall but in the morning hours.

Only anecdotal, but I had a friend that worked graveyard shift for a few
months and when she could get proper sleep during the day it was pretty much
like that. She'd be awake and energetic around 10 or 11 pm, worked through her
shift, would go through that same early 'morning' productive push and that
after 'lunch' slump and by morning she'd be tired and kind of hazy before she
went to sleep. It just ended up being she'd never get proper sleep during the
day to the point she was tired and hazy all the time and couldn't take it any
more and had to quit.

During the beginning though, her memory for things was definitely better at
night when she first got up. She'd forget things from conversations we'd have
in thr morning or sometimes she wouldn't remember them at all and her memory
is usually pretty good, sometimes better than mine, with things or wouldn't
really be that coherent about what was going on.

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Bartweiss
Generally, people working night shifts in "normal" settings have worse health
and cognitive outcomes than people on equivalent day shifts. (Swing shifts are
evil, and do far more damage than either.)

There seem to be two main factors driving that. One is simply that we arrange
the world for being awake in the day: night-shift workers get less sleep due
to daytime tasks (e.g. going to the bank), and worse sleep because isolating
from light and noise is much harder during the day. The other is a bit more
subtle: even with a bright office and blackout curtains, nightshift workers
get hammered with conflicting time/light signals every time they commute home
or go near a window. It's like a vastly worse version of checking staring into
a computer screen right before bed.

There are other impacts, too - I've heard of nightshift workers getting
something like SAD, and Vitamin D deficiencies are probably common. But all of
that applies to people in wholly-artificial light cycles (e.g. submarines or
the Arctic), and yet those people seem to cope far better than 'regular'
nightshift workers.

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lspears
Mentions Zeitgeber which I had to look up:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeber)

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jodrellblank
I have read of Dementia having “sun downing” issues as patients get worse
symptoms around dusk, and care homes having good results by brighter daytime
lights and working on day/night rhythms.

Prof. Satchin Panda’s work is on intermittent fasting and circadian rhythms,
and in his TED talk he has dementia on a slide as one of the possible problems
involved with this kind of metabolic dysregulation.

Now this memory recall depending on circadian rhythm;

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gallerdude
So heavy technology (blue light) use literally gives us worse memory. As our
economy moves to be more and more attention-based, that sounds about right.

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tgb
Where do you get that from the article? They even say tha the memory deficits
were observed in constant darkness conditions as well (and therefore due to
intrinsic clock not extrinsic light per se). Also keep in mind that mice are
nocturnal so poor memory performance late in the light period for them is
probably analogous to poor memory performance during early morning for us,
when there is no light.

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jmpman
I notice that my recall is much better if I had learned the information while
moving... either driving a car (actively aware of my surroundings) or on a
walk. I can typically think back to exactly where I was when I learned
something.

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jcims
I think I have a related thing going on in my brain. My recall ability is poor
to middling, but if I listen to a podcast a second time within a week or two
of the first, I have these intrusive and extremely vivid scenes play out in my
mind from the first time I listened to the podcast.

I want to try an experiment where I film my first listen, then a week later
re-listen and narrate the 'film' without watching it to see how close i am.

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nkrisc
Kind of similar experience. As a kid, when we'd go on a road trip, on the way
back I'd remember everything I was thinking about on the trip there, but in
reverse order. It was the landmarks and scenes that triggered the recall of
what I had been thinking about when I saw it the on the trip there.

