

Poor Sleep Prevents Brain From Storing Memories - jjp9999
http://techzwn.com/2013/01/poor-sleep-prevents-brain-from-storing-memories/

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yankeehue
I think there's an evolutionary advantage to this. If you don't commit new
memories when sleep-deprived, then you don't remember how rough the first few
months of parenting a newborn can be (you get very little sleep during that
time) and you're more likely to have more children.

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kghose
"The hippocampus stores short-term memories, while the prefrontal cortex is
our long-term memory bank." This statement runs contrary to all the current
concepts of information storage in the brain. The hippocampus is where long
term memories are stored, the prefrontal cortex is involved in working memory,
planning and evaluating action outcomes and a bunch of other things we have
barely figured out.

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xijuan
Can I remind everyone "Correlation does not imply causation"?

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danteembermage
And in this case there is an obvious omitted factor (which is important to
consider when levying this allegation) age. Perhaps being old makes you sleep
worse and have trouble retaining memories, but sleep has nothing to do with
memories at all (although we have lots of reasons to suspect that it does).
They would also have found arthritis, type II diabetes, prostate cancer, and a
host of other things reduced memory _if their design was as described by the
article_. Given that they have fMRI data it would be fairly simple to run a
correlation between quality of sleep and retention within an age cohort and
see what you get. Given that they got funding to do the MRIs I'm suspicious
that in the actual study they did, I'm not sure you need scans to know the
elders often don't sleep well.

But if that works, perhaps it was weight causing poor sleep and memory
retention. Or alcohol abuse. I'm not saying this research can't be done but
it's a lot more trustworthy if you either 1. randomize subjects and do a
treatment or 2. have a much larger dataset and statistically control for these
suspicious factors.

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bane
An interesting family that suffers from a specific sleep deprivation disorder
where they simply stop sleeping in middle age and die a few months later.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6503414>

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hessenwolf
Great link. I discovered I am highly allergic to linden trees this summer, my
first allergy, and was only sleeping 3-4 hours a night, maximum. I was so
confused and forgetful of peoples names.

Granted, I also partied non-stop the whole summer.

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eli_gottlieb
And yet sleep is always the first thing to be sacrificed when we "need to get
stuff done".

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Scaevolus
If you use an SRS flashcard program, you'll see strong correlations between
days you didn't get enough sleep and lowered retention rates.

Similarly, staying up all night to study for an exam is silly.

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PakG1
It's not silly if you never paid attention in any of the classes and you're
learning the stuff for the first time. I know that's happened to me before,
especially for a lot of the easier courses. Some knowledge that has a high
probability of not being retained is better than no knowledge. :)

This is of course a stupid solution to a completely different problem, but
those courses didn't inspire me to try my best... if I had another chance, I
don't know if I would try harder. I know that sounds bad.

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lifeisstillgood
No, it sounds like a cost benefit analysis - the only concern is how to judge
if a course is worth learning _before_ conducting the analysis.

"I don't need no Calculus" is a fail in the analysis, "I dont need no Media
Studies and the effect of the Female Eunach on Porn Pay per TV channels" is
not.

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PakG1
That assumes that gaining knowledge is the only point of taking a course. Easy
credits are also a viable reason. So are required credits.

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mattgreenrocks
Been there, done that. Inadequate deep sleep also causes your body to skip the
muscle/tissue repair process that happens overnight. I wound up with
tendonitis this way and eventually burnt out.

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acd
I think dreaming and the process of storing memories is a key piece of solving
Artificial intelligence. IE we must teach the artificial brain to sleep in
order for it to store and sort memories. For me it seems similar to a garbage
collect function of the brain.

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

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VMG
Your view is very anthropocentric.

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maeon3
Your brain is a neural network of neural networks, during sleep, a cost
function is applied across the entire grid. Important aspects of your day are
done, and redone at high velocity, simultaneously (leading to dreams).

Cost benefit analysis are done against what you might have done, and the
results of that, and actions that would have caused more desirable outcomes
are projected, as best as it can see, and the habits, and motor neurons are
reconfigured accordingly, this explains why when you get good sleep, and you
wake up, you find yourself much better able to do tasks than had you not
slept. If you don't sleep, you die.

Source of these points:

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-
Revealed/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-
Revealed/dp/0670025291)

<https://www.coursera.org/course/ml>

Title is misleading, this function also has to do with encoding short term
memories to long term memories. Since the mind only has limited space (limited
number of neurons to configure), that only the most useful memories are stored
into permanent disk. Disruption of the 7 to 9 hour sleep cycle garbage
collects the memories that were about to be stored. The mind queues them up to
be dealt with the following day, but sometimes are displaced or missed by more
passionate things in the present.

Sleep is one of the most important things you can do to maintain your mind and
keep it in top running condition for as long as possible, not too little, not
too much, sleep in intervals of 90 minutes. If you consume garbage knowledge
on a daily basis, your mind will encode that garbage to permanent disk, and
you will become that garbage.

Conspiracy theorists suffer from a mental misconfiguration where the cost
function applied to the neural network of neural networks suffers from "over
fitting". Finding patterns in randomness leading to conclusions are not valid.
A lambda function can be applied against the cost function which will
alleviate this. I can do it in software, and when I discover the operating
principles of the neo cortex, I will be able to fix all the conspiracy nuts in
the local nut house. Take care to not take for granted the fresh slate of your
mind while you are young, because when you are old, it'll be mostly full and
encoding new skills to disk much more difficult, the cost function is more
reluctant to modify the grids since doing so would damage your ability to
consume resources, find mates and create more of you. Fill you mind with
timeless wisdom and get good sleep before your hard disks become full.

~~~
rgbrenner
"If you don't sleep, you die."

No human has ever died from simply not sleeping (excluding accidents, etc
caused by lack of sleep)

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-
ca...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-can-humans-
stay)

[http://www.abc.net.au/health/talkinghealth/factbuster/storie...](http://www.abc.net.au/health/talkinghealth/factbuster/stories/2012/03/13/3451196.htm#.UQaQ0idEE1M)

~~~
fuzzythinker
See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Ngoc>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Herpin>

