https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636982/

In short it explains, mechanistically, why poor sleep affects daily cognition, mental health, and age-related declines. Robust scientific theories explain more of the evidence. The glymphatic nervous system explains why sleep is so key to surviving and thriving. Maiken Nedergaard will end up winning the Nobel for its discovery.

Sadly her issues are mostly psychologically rooted due to past trauma, while all the treatments seem to be geared towards "simple" physical issues. She's tried contacting various sleep clinics here and they've all said they can't help.

She struggles a lot with falling asleep, she's exceptionally sensitive to sound and vibration while trying to sleep or sleeping, and if she falls asleep she almost always have nightmares, which significantly reduces the quality of the sleep even if they don't always wake her up.

One issue is that when you're that close to the limit of what is no longer bearable, it's hard to just try things. For example, I've been thinking exposure therapy might help for her sound and light sensitivity, but she's not convinced it'll help and doesn't want to try potentially sleeping even worse for many weeks. Which I understand, but...

One of the study tricks that the host figured out, was that if you want to memorize something, you should get rid of all the other things you don’t want to learn, and that journaling is amazingly good at that. Basically if you write down all the things you don’t want to remember, it sort of leaves space to move things to long term memory.

I say all this, because I’ve been experimenting with journaling at night, and it really helps with some of the restless nights where it feels like something is keeping me awake. It’s not a magic bullet, and it takes effort, but it may help to write down the things bothering your partner prior to sleep to allow for some of the ”less important” processes to happen.

I’ve experienced that a moderate or intense exercise regimen can help a lot with sleep.

If she hasn’t tried therapies directed at trauma and recovery that may also be helpful.

She did start exercising some years ago, and it did improve. But then real-life issues triggers her anxiety and it's back to square one.

She's tried therapy for a long time with little result. She's very smart, but most likely has ADHD, so for example mindfulness and similar doesn't seem to work well (either "boring" so she loses focus, or too "obvious" without actionable content).

Though we recently found a therapist which she really resonated with. It's slow work but I think it's been helping.

There's certainly a correlation for my self though.

(1) https://www.inhousepharmacy.vu/p-1189-phenergan-tablets-25mg...

Sounds like the name of a Centaur Character in any D&D style game.

But yeah, as I mention in a reply to a sibling comment, she's tried therapy for years without much progress, though recently making some progress on that front.

Your milage may vary of course

Try these: https://www.loopearplugs.com/products/quiet

And at the same time have some calming barely perceptible background noise from a speaker somewhere in the room. White noise, brown noise, lofi, whatever works. Make sure the bedroom has blackout curtains and soft light.

As for cannabis, she doesn't have to smoke it. Appropriate edibles will knock her to sleep. Doesn't have to be a permanent thing either, breaking the cycle and getting good sleep for a few weeks is life changing and may be the start of a virtuous cycle instead.

I recommend both of you enjoy this video together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK2iXQm4LJs

Good luck!

Just saw they very recently approved some canabis oil drops for medicinal use here, so that might also be an option.

However, by consuming throughout the day on a daily basis but stopping by late afternoon or early evening, my sleep and dreaming is vastly improved.

But we've talked about it, though mostly to reduce her anxiety. If it can help with nightmares as well, then would indeed be quite interesting.

I really enjoy the experience, but granted, none of the dreams were nightmares. I wonder if this happens to other people, and how badly it could affect people who use cannabis to suppress recurring nightmares.

I got one of those Garmin activity trackers. After using it for a while, she tried it.

I know they ain't perfect but there's a very stark contrast between her and me, using the same tracker. It'll show me getting typically 4-5 hours of deep sleep when I have a good night. With her it's typically an hour tops, often less than 30 minutes.

If she's sensitive to sound and light, what has she tried to address that? Like blackout curtains?

I find it a bit odd that sleep clinics would turn her away so readily.

I understand the struggle though which is why I asked so many questions, because all of these things have factored into my quest for better sleep. The psychological stuff is hard.

As sibling reply says, clinics seem to treat sleep apnea and similar direct physical causes, as well as provide very basic information.

She got a referral from her doctor but all the ones she contacted were very clear they couldn't do anything for her so wouldn't even take her in for observation.

I don't. I've had significant problems with insomnia in the past, and in general I've found that sleep clinics really only focus on two issues:

1. Restless leg syndrome

2. Sleep Apnea

Beyond that, there really isn't much they can do besides (1) recommending standard "sleep hygiene" stuff, or (2) drugs, which all come with various tradeoffs.

I had been in therapy for nearly 15 years, and I while I wasn't on antidepressants long term, I had taken them for a couple episodes in the past. For my most recent episode (partially brought on by a particularly bad prolonged string of insomnia) I was having constant suicidal thoughts. I went in and had a ketamine session - I'm reluctant to talk to much about the details of my ketamine trip, because one theory I have for why it worked well for me is that I didn't have any preconceived notions about what I'd experience, and I specifically didn't want to get my hopes up.

The next morning I was singing in the shower. If there was ever a substance that I believed "miracle drug" fit the bill, for me it was ketamine. It helped me develop a whole new outlook on life and how I related to myself. I know that I was very lucky (my psychiatrist says I am a "ketamine responder") and not everyone has that same response. For me, though, I firmly believe ketamine treatment saved my life.

There’s lots popping up now though. Even in Canada I thought we’d have trouble getting support from our family doctor but she was actually supportive so now if we look to do any more can just get referral from the GP here and do it in toronto.

Definitely do hope you give it a try, might be just what your SO has been looking for. Also seriously don’t discount the weighted blanket!

Kind of like how someone might excel at a specific test because of a lesser sense of pain, but that lack of feedback loop can be detrimental in the long run as they keep injury themselves without noticing.

But why? Is this knowledge onservation based (“that is how it is in the organisms we studied”) or is it a theoretical limit?

Dolphins for example seems to get by without fully going unconscious. (I’m talking about the literal marine mamals, not a chronotype or anything like that here.)

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/noninvasive-brain-wave-treatmen...

Hopefully without having to induce those brainwaves, otherwise you might be able to do it during the day but you wouldn't exactly be conscious. But there's also the question of whether those brainwaves are doing more than just cleaning the brain.

I think some types of learning and memory formation also happen during sleep, right?

...Lucid daydreaming button, anyone? Maybe not lucid if it's the exact same as normal sleep, but I'm sure that if such a thing more exist, you'd be able to adjust exactly how it affects your brain.

Tell that to sleepwalkers!

- Sleep paralysis doesn't properly activate, and someone accidentally transfers the motion of walking into real life. proprioception may pass through to the dream, they might perceive a dream environment that allows them to navigate the real one. (i.e. righting themself from bed, staying upright while walking)

- They aren't fully asleep, but they aren't awake/aware either. I've had my fair share of people telling me that I said or did things after waking up and before immediately going back to sleep, and those are things I don't remember doing at all, probably because they weren't properly recorded in memory because my brain was not fully awake. (Some of these cases could have been DID though.)

So yeah, 10 years in medicine? Seems like a brand new paper to me. I expect that knowledge to bubble its way to your average physician some time around 2040.

So with the slow pace knowledge makes it into the school curriculum, you likely wouldn't have heard about it in school unless you just left the system a year or two ago (if even then).

I guess I should have slept more

Could not find any free access to the paper, even though the Univ' says "This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH); the BJC Investigators Program at Washington University; and the Neuroscience Innovation Foundation."

These kind of grant funded research should be accessible at the least from the Univ' websites.

In this case it seems the authors didn’t pay the (crazy expensive) Nature open access fee. They will have to upload a free PDF to PubMed manually, but have up to a year to do so, and don’t seem to have done it yet.

And it’s paid once, to make the whole thing open perpetually. It certainly seems better than having the people interested in reading it pay $30-40 each.

Of course, this is also based on the few times I’ve heard researchers talk about the ways they could spend their grant money. $2k to Nature sounds like a great deal by comparison.

Note: Worked for Nature in the past.

Ultimately what you are paying for is curation.

https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/do-sleep-rhythms...

Jiang-Xie, LF., Drieu, A., Bhasiin, K. et al. Neuronal dynamics direct cerebrospinal fluid perfusion and brain clearance. Nature 627, 157–164 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07108-6

Every Uni should have access through your library system.

Stanford maintains an extensive catalog of research papers: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/in00000064276

When I buy a keyboard, the manufacturer doesn’t run a shipping company, so they use $x from the purchase price to subcontract shipping. (They tell me it’s separate at billing, but they don’t make me ring up DSL myself either.)

When I hire an electrician, they buy materials from Home Depot, so they use $x from the purchase price for materials. (They sometimes break down the bill into materials and labor, but they don’t make me drive to Home Depot myself and buy every part.)

When the public hires academics to do research, they have administrative overhead and have to hire a publisher, so they use $x from the grant for administrative overhead and…

Abdicate responsibility for the $y needed for publishing and pretend the public didn’t intend for part of the grant money to go to that??

OP was saying that publicly funded research needs to have, built in to its budget for the research, enough money to make the findings publicly available. The publishing mechanism is largely arbitrary here, only that it must be budgeted for.

The arXiv is a nonprofit organization run by Cornell that hosts preprints, and I wouldn't be surprised if it holds more stuff than all the for-profit publishers combined at this point. The barriers to uploading on the arXiv are very low - all you need is to be at a recognized academic institution or endorsed by someone who works for one.

Resources like arXiv have made official publishing largely superfluous for spreading knowledge in the parts of academia that understand and care about the value of spreading knowledge for free. Analogous archives exist for (at least) biology, medicine, psychology, and economics.

https://info.arxiv.org/about/index.html

But what stops Univ' site to have original research paper available for download? Nature magazine is just a distribution channel (they did not sponsor the research so should not have exclusive rights on it).

Left college long time ago; and do not have access to any library system.

If you want to publish in an Open Access manner, you need to pay the costs. Or if your country wants to license it for Open Access, your country pays the costs.

Elsevier has a nice summary at [0]. At the bottom there's "Publicly share the final published article". It's "YES" for Open Access and "NO" for subscription (classical) model. There's a rather detailed "Scholarly Share" which allows sharing with researchers, but not to any researcher, as I aforementioned on top.

[0]: https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/copyri...

The paper was not bad to begin with, but the edited/revised version painted a more complete picture which shouldn't be possible without a set of external reviewers.

The more we all do it, the more expected the practice becomes and with any luck, these money-grubbing journals will take note and start offering copies at a minimal fee or time-limited access.

I was away from academic arena for some time. Looks like I'll be returning soon-ish.

Are they actually responsible for the observed activity, or do they merely trigger some ‘flushing’ mechanism inherent to the cells? Or, are the waves a result of that process?

"The accumulation of metabolic waste is a leading cause of numerous neurological disorders, yet we still have only limited knowledge of how the brain performs self-cleansing. Here we demonstrate that neural networks synchronize individual action potentials to create large-amplitude, rhythmic and self-perpetuating ionic waves in the interstitial fluid of the brain. These waves are a plausible mechanism to explain the correlated potentiation of the glymphatic flow1,2 through the brain parenchyma. Chemogenetic flattening of these high-energy ionic waves largely impeded cerebrospinal fluid infiltration into and clearance of molecules from the brain parenchyma. Notably, synthesized waves generated through transcranial optogenetic stimulation substantially potentiated cerebrospinal fluid-to-interstitial fluid perfusion. Our study demonstrates that neurons serve as master organizers for brain clearance. This fundamental principle introduces a new theoretical framework for the functioning of macroscopic brain waves."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38418877/

This line is the money shot. An action potential is the variable electrical charge of a neuron, and they maintain that charge by containing a certain concentration of ions relative to the surrounding cerebrospinal fluid. This paper proposes that neurons synchonise their charge state, which forces ions to flow in or out of the neurons in bulk, the movement of these ions causing the cerebrospinal fluid to move around, clearing out the accumulated debris.

If you look at the Goldstein-Katz equations you see that the conductivities play an as important role as the concentrations.

Most of the voltage change is driven by changes in conductivities and not concentration changes, the ion movements across the membrane should be negligible.

Off course you have the free ions outside the cells than diffuse in a field gradient.

Sounds like unsync'd brain waves, (being awake) impedes cerebrospinal fluid flow through the brain.

When asleep, neurons sync their action potentials, acting like a ionized fluid pump, moving old dirty cerebrospinal fluid out, and allowing new, clean in.

Interestingly, when they synthesize that type of ionization using other means, they saw the same increase in fluid movement.

This is my best attempt at translating. Hopefully within 1-2 football fields. The author leaves choice of American or the rest of the world to the reader to decide.

--

Well, thats basically the trope of every Cybernetic design, with the connectors comming out the back of head/spine...

Like a continual wash which keeps you in this suspended hyper-aware, but calm, rested and focused mental state.

This is why cyborgs have such incredible reflexes.

Most fascinating video I’ve seen in a long time.

Edit: If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend checking it out https://youtu.be/7BGtVJ3lBdE

If we can create/prevent blood-brain-barrier-"Portals" as it were, via ultrasound - and do so like we do with the gamma knife but with sound waves, it would be more harmonious with our nature. (3/6/9 tesla rhythms and all that)

and was just thinking about the vid you had, and how they are using the ultrasound intersections "at the blood brain barrier

Where exactly is this intersection occurring?

Is it poking a hole in something for the plaque to 'flow through' via the cereberal flush?

--

Ah I have my answer::

The transiant gap created by FUS will last a few hours...

So - here is where a few LLM ideas come to mind - as the gap allows for the flow of the enzymes through for a bit before they heal - what is the optimal location for placing the FUS pulses?

How many FUS pulses required to create the gap is unclear, as is exactly how long it takes for the enzyme flush - however, there is currently (mostly?) single point systems, but multi-point systems are being tested. What would be interesting to determine is if there could be a spatial pattern for placing the gaps, assuming you have a multi-point FUS system, imagine creating (N) FUS gaps simultaniously in a pattern which followed the natural flow of the enzyme flush - such that if the cereberal flush is flowing in a clockwise fashion - openening FUS gaps in accordance with the direction and timing of the enzyme flush's frequency. directed flow FUS animation.

It seems you dont have to explicitly open a gap with a FUS pulse - so can "massage" behavior such that you can direct flow? I guess only depending on the frequency with which you can aim and fire FUS pulses - but if you have multiple FUS sources? you can 'kite' the flow in...

which reinforces this: "In the context of Alzheimer’s disease, post-FUS tracer enhancement phenomena suggest the existence of a brain-wide perivenous fluid efflux pathway in humans4. This could potentially facilitate the drainage of harmful substances

I wonder what the energy consumption per pulse, how many pulses per gap, how many gaps per hour.

https://www.elcaminohealth.org/news/el-camino-hospital-purch...

---

But what would be really interesting is the marriage of a multi point FUS system layered on top of a cyberknife where as the cyberknife uses xrays to track the position of the prostate in order to determing the location of the point its 'knifing' - if you can massage points into position using FUS - maybe a multi-point FUS can hold a prostates target in position in sync with the cyberknifes 'knifing' and validation via xrays?

-- ala:

Focused Ultrasound (FUS) and the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB): FUS has been shown to disrupt the BBB in a noninvasive, safe, and targeted manner1. The mechanical effects of FUS, namely cavitation, are thought to be the principle cause behind this BBB disruption1. This method of BBB disruption – FUS with microbubbles – has had very promising results1.

CyberKnife and Prostate Treatment: The CyberKnife System uses advanced technologies to track tumors anywhere in the body, while its unique robotic design keeps the radiation on target even while the tumor moves2. Before delivering the radiation beam, the CyberKnife System verifies the exact tumor position then adjusts the robot to precisely target the tumor2. This system is particularly effective for treating prostate cancer345.

Potential Combination of FUS and CyberKnife: In theory, a multi-point FUS system could potentially be used to “hold” a prostate target in position, working in sync with the CyberKnife’s tracking and ‘knifing’. This could potentially enhance the precision of the treatment, as the FUS system could help ensure the prostate remains in the optimal position for the CyberKnife treatment.

It is pretty grueling how bad it feels to not sleep so a cap like this would at least make it so the build up doesn't kill you from over collecting old fluid excessively.

""

I tried to observe the phenomena yesterday again and couldn't observe it but it was very specifically this in the past: spherical orbs of white light expanding from a centre. There were many of these, and my perception was that the nature of this geometric expanding shape was healing. To describe it more clearly, many years ago I felt that the perfect geometric spherical nature of these expanding waves were designed to gently round off rough edges. To make an analogy, imagine kneading some play dough over and over again. When you use your hands to do so, every time your hands make contact with the play dough, the play dough changes shape slightly because of the contact between your hands and the play dough and it gets softer. Now apply this concept to the idea of energetic waves making contact and passing through the material substrate of the brain and the rest of the body (yes I observed the waves applying to more than just my mind). It was my physical and conscious perception that as the spherical waves emanated from some center, they gently readjusted the physical substrate that they passed through. And because there were so many of them in different spatial locations, this readjustment was incredibly refined.

I have no expertise in this area I’m just a dreamer :)

There are courses one can take where one learns this, like Art of Living and any other that follows the same traditions.

Yes, there's research on that, and new studies should absolutely gain from this study. Not entirely sure you'll observe the same effect, that depends on meditator, but you can fall asleep during practice.

I have over a decade experience with it, and have also participated on a study on breathing exercises and epigenetic effects from that versus blind control.

Replacing hours of sleep with hours of yogo or mediation seems like you are not gaining anything.

However, the goal of meditation can be very diverse, since there are many different techniques, each with their own aims and side-effects. Generally, the main goal is often to calm the mind, make the body relax and let go of stress. There are many more benefits though, which you only realize when doing personal and experiencial practice over longer periods of time. It's not like the effects are the same for each person even, so it's more like a discovery process rather than do A, B, C techniques for X, Y, Z gains. However, there's a baseline of methods and general health, which is what it's usually used for. Very few people are suited to be munks or living in secluded communes like that. But it can be Very nice to be on a 1-2 week retreat now and then.

Of course that's a huge generality, I'd say it may be 1 out of 5 people like that in the US, but its the fact that it is not constrained to any particular demographic/background.

I wouldn't be surprised if the idea that it's completely useless because it can't be scientifically observed in a traditional sense is highly correlated with people who think that mental health issues aren't real in general.

Where's the evidence that yoga and meditation accomplish the effects of sleep and how strong is it?

Let's say my discretionary spending is 30% of my income, it goes up by a third, and I need to work 10% longer hours. Okay, so I adjust to a 44 hour work week and I get an extra 30+ hours of free time? Great!

it could be used in endurance/focused events. high stress relief, traumatic brain injury - like immediate induce afte cte event in foot ball

head trauma in car accident

ODs etc...

-

When I was a baby, and I would get ill, my mom would calm me and put me to sleep - and I would sleep for an extended period and my mom would say that I would wake up fully well.

If this could be induced in infants going through trauma's such as a surgery, where inducing natural brain-flush instead of pumping a tiny body full of "medicine" this might be great for their long term mental development outside of having medicines in them when growing extremely fast.

I had never taken sleep very seriously prior to that and I feel extremely foolish for it. Life is 100x better if you get an appropriate amount of sleep. Everything becomes a little easier.

In my case, I was able to take a sleep test from a doctor which was basically just a pulse oximeter I wore while sleeping.

My boss was diagnosed with apnea in his 30s. It was so bad they didn't believe his first test results and had to redo it, off the charts. According to him it literally killed his father. Once he started using the device for sleeping he had 100x more mental and physical energy, everything was just easier.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524974/#!po=72...

Humans. Just can't win can they.

Short, intentional, regular napping is associated with a lower risks of dementia. This is different from increased, longer, napping seen in older adults. Longer naps in older adults is associated with Alzheimer’s. See this summary:

https://www.alzdiscovery.org/cognitive-vitality/blog/can-nap...

It will be interesting to see if further research in humans can pinpoint a plausible causal mechanism in adult for both regular night time sleep and intentional short daytime napping. This might encourage companies to put in ‘sleep pods’ or at least remove the stigma of adult napping.

Thank you for trying.

or this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPEOviBqr_c

EDIT: also

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=785729915751081

Maybe it’s dreaming? Dreaming by my experience is tedious and not restful… I have 4-6 dreams every night and never feel like I’m truly asleep.

Shouldn’t be hard to figure out with an EKG and a decent graph to see what your aiming for.

Disclaimer : I have no source and I may be wrong. It’s my understanding.

Now I wake up refreshed but I’m sick of watching the same rehashed combinations of dreams. I can do lucid dreaming, but I’d just rather not dream at all

4 to 6 dreams every night sounds exhausting. You should probably check it out with a doctor, it seems you're subconsciously waking up too often during the night.

The "waves" don't exist in the brain - which is why I'm surprised this title survived publication.

The wave is the electrical activity we measure as a result of the synchronous firing of neurons which is the hallmark of deep sleep.

The slow-wave is linked to the glymphatic flush.

We can't create slow-waves, however, we can increase their power (more synchronous firing).

This is known science, and we've been working to commercialize it for the last 4 years. Getting close. https://affectablesleep.com

It might change the comfort level of ‘clean’ you brain finds acceptable before commanding the janitor out of his closet.

Anyone deep into this field around?

Glymphatic System activity is linked to the synchronous firing of neurons that define slow-wave sleep.

If you interrupt the brain near the peak of a slow wave, the brain response is to increase this synchronous firing, increasing delta power, and the flushing of the glymphatic system.

Monash University here in Australia is looking into the impact this may have on Alzheimer's prevention.

There isn't a drug that I'm aware of that is as effective.

You can do what we do with rTMS, light stimulation, haptics, etc. it's more about interrupting the brain than it is creating a slow-wave, as far as everything I am aware of in the current literature.

We link to a few studies on our website https://affectablesleep.com - I'll be posting more links soon (we just launched our re-brand 2 days ago).

Your brain is a movie theater. When it's in use it's all bright lights and gripping soundtrack and shiny shiny. But once in a while you have to chase out the Observers and shut down the projector and then go grab a hose and ruthlessly flush out all the tracked-in mud and popcorn remnants and stepped-on gummy bears and who the hell knows what other gunk.

In rats or something

Much like you occasionally reboot your machine to flush and re-align memory etc...

When you sleep, your sensory input systems are handed a surrogate (dreams) whist the rest of your brain gets back into phase with itself, and the idea is that this allows for an 'alignment' of sorts within the brain which allows for the cerberal fluids to more porously flow through the brain and carry away ionic and other molecules which freely float through the brain.

As the rain washes the paths and the streets after a windy, dusty day...

To allow for a fresh path where the previous wake-cycles experiences in molocules can be more properly absorbed into the brain and your neurons can 'take in' what happened all wake cycle.

Any recommendations on how long should I sleep for this process to kick off and get completed? Or does it happen all the time I am sleeping?

So just get as much sleep as your body is saying "HEY BITCH!"

Also - you will have more beneficial sleep in fully dark, no-screens (or other magnetic objects (cell phone, under pillow, for example) near head.

make sure you dont have sleep apnia (make sure you have clear deep breathing when sleeping)....

Not only because you think Musk is any where near the leader in the implant space, but more so that you don't understand optogenetics. The device referenced here was transcranial (i.e., non-invasive) but regardless optogenetics requires tagging specific neurons with an opsin (usually via viral vector).

I'm sorry for being curt but this is the 4th or 5th neuroscience post in the last 72h that HN have blasted with shit takes. If I wanted misunderstood science I'd revive my Reddit account.

Yes you are right one would probably use transient gene therapy tho make a modification like that, but transcranial methods are afaik for human adults less suitable since the structures lying above the stuff you usually want to stimulate are simply too thick, so a hypothetical sleep replacement machine would probably need to be an implant. That is unless you can use self-refocusing lasers or holograms for stimulation, but I do not see how one would do this unless you replace most of the skull with glass.

The point with Musk was a joke more or less.

Though it’s true that he is probably the only person both morally ambiguous enough to even try to build a dystopian sleep replacement machine and capable of getting funding for it.

Maybe a Reddit account is a good idea.

Probably not... I think our brains are like LLMs. We train them on sensory input we perceive over time, building up a data model that is unique to us. The models may generate similar results, but each person's brains are wired as differently as the raw binary data stored in ChatGPT vs Llama or Gemini. Thus the cleaning mechanism is probably unique per person as well.

But I don't really have a clue. It's just a logical inference.

The mechanism is very not unique. Unlike other neuronal activity, the slow-waves are synchronous firing of neurons, and almost all brains respond to interruptions 30 degrees off the peak of the wave.

It's much more health engineering than much of the medicine I'm aware of.

We've been working on this for the last 4 years at https://affectablesleep.com

Gonna say it's still news!

Then it starts sounding like a great deal to me at least.

If it's opportunistic GC, then it's simply running when nothing else is.

IOW, we may need the sleep for a different reason, and that is when the load is low enough to allow the GC to run.

Assume that we can trigger this while awake. This doesn't mean that we don't need to sleep for some other reason.

But thinking about it more, maybe there is something to it? I'm wholly unqualified to speculate here, but I know computers and computers are exactly the same as everything in the real world, so let's go! ...

- When restful and with my eyes closed, I definitely "see" waves move across my field of vision. My eyes see "black" (or dark gray) with slightly lighter edges that move and act like a wavefront in a fluid. There's distinct flow, and (minor) swirling and interference. I've seen these since I was very young, and I have no idea if it's a common thing or if it has a name. It must. I've mentioned it to a very small number of other non-experts but no one has ever recognized it. (I also sometimes see tiny colored tiles that light up in moving masses -- again rarely mentioned but never recognized, probably an unrelated phenomenon...)

- I do not think these are simply phosphenes, because there is no external proximate stimuli. Though I suppose we all live in environments saturated with EMF, most of the time, and a proper test would require being in a very remote area (and that's probably not enough). Though if I can "see" the presence of EMF, I'm totally making some phone calls to Charles Xavier's people.

- I've theorized that this was fluid in my eye (eyelid is too thin) moving around and refracting what little light is getting through in a dark room. But it also happens when I am completely still (though nothing in the body is ever completely still), and it also happens in complete darkness.

- The "shape" of the waves does not resemble anything that could be related to blood vessels in the eyelid. And again, complete darkness.

- So, is it possible that it's actually this ionic flow of CSF through the vision-sensing part of the brain? Not actually light coming through my eyeballs at all, but fluidlike electrical variations in the parts of the brain itself which are sensitive to the electrical signals normally coming from the optic nerves?

I have no idea. But it's an fun new angle to consider in the idle moments while I watch the waves flow before I fall asleep.

(That said, please feel free to correct my wild speculation if there's an obvious explanation that has not intersected my completely-unrelated fields of study! :)

I tried to observe the phenomena yesterday again and couldn't observe it but it was very specifically this in the past: spherical orbs of white light expanding from a centre. There were many of these, and my perception was that the nature of this geometric expanding shape was healing. To describe it more clearly, many years ago I felt that the perfect geometric spherical nature of these expanding waves were designed to gently round off rough edges. To make an analogy, imagine kneading some play dough over and over again. When you use your hands to do so, every time your hands make contact with the play dough, the play dough changes shape slightly because of the contact between your hands and the play dough and it gets softer. Now apply this concept to the idea of energetic waves making contact and passing through the material substrate of the brain and the rest of the body (yes I observed the waves applying to more than just my mind). It was my physical and conscious perception that as the spherical waves emanated from some center, they gently readjusted the physical substrate that they passed through. And because there were so many of them in different spatial locations, this readjustment was incredibly refined.

I was slightly disappointed to see my comment down voted but I'm not too surprised. I stand by my description as an accurate and well considered, rational description of what I had observed in the past.