
Fluid oscillations in human sleep - rdpfeffer
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6465/628
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Mathnerd314
Press writeup: [http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/cerebrospinal-fluid-
washing-...](http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/cerebrospinal-fluid-washing-in-
brain-during-sleep/)

The HN title seems quite misleading compared to the original title of "Coupled
electrophysiological, hemodynamic, and cerebrospinal fluid oscillations in
human sleep" (which could be shortened using CSF). The main focus of the study
is measuring cerebrospinal fluid flows and its finding that CSF flow is
correlated with slow wave EEG activity in this three phase neurons quiet,
blood flow decreased, CSF flow increase pattern. The abstract does reference
some work from 2006/2010 about consolidation and from 2015 about waste
cleaning, but the paper is not a literature review paper so there's better
writing on that subject elsewhere.

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tanilama
Almost like the brain has a compaction and garbage collection phase.

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tasogare
I'm surprised nobody asked to rewrite it in Rust yet.

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username90
People have tried rewriting it in Metal many times but there is still a long
way to go.

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ASalazarMX
If anything, we should focus our efforts on porting it to Vulkan.

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flatfilefan
It would be interesting to have them study brain functions during the so
called “transcendental” meditation. The school claims that it were a third
state of brain activity, somewhere inbetween of sleeping and being conscious.
In my experience it also may have the cleaning effect.

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pstuart
A side thought about this: dreams.

I have this theory that dreams are the experience of our brains rebooting
after being taken down for maintenance; kind of like reading from
uninitialized memory.

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Merrill
Dreams are maintenance. They are overnight batch processing after the realtime
system is largely shut down. Your realtime conscious system then reboots from
the now consolidated memory when you wake up.

You are a new and different person each morning.

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ASalazarMX
This new and different person is practically indistinguishable from the old,
though.

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Merrill
It depends. For example, if you were drinking you may have been conscious of
things the night before that you no longer remember the next morning.

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lawnchair_larry
Sounds like the brain uses Doug Lea Malloc

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rzzzt
Boehm GC

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sigmaprimus
Cleaning waste and Consolidating are almost opposite functions, I believe it
archives the memory and waste together. I suffered from a traumatic event and
simultaneously forgot about a bank account I opened a week earlier. Seven
years later I tried to open a new account at the bank, was reminded about the
account after getting into an argument with the manager, and the trauma
returned in the form of insomnia and nightmares.

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nightfly
Physical metabolic waste, not figurative waste.

