DailyDirt: Sleeping Might Not Be Over-rated

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's still a bit mysterious why sleep is so necessary. Some people seem to need more than others, and there's at least one guy who claims he doesn't need sleep at all. Here are just a few more tidbits on the topic of sleeping, for all of you sleepyheads and night owls.

• Sleeping for only 2-3 hours per day with a polyphasic sleep schedule sounds like a difficult regimen to maintain. This diary of a polyphasic sleep experiment ends after about 5 months, and it's not too hard to imagine why more people don't try it. [url]
• About 1-2% of the population consists of "long sleepers" who need at least 10 hours of sleep at night in order to function normally. Sleep duration varies widely and could involve genetic factors. (Surprise!) [url]
• If you think you're special and don't need as much sleep as anyone else, maybe you are or maybe parts of your brain are shutting down while you're awake and you don't even realize it. At least in sleep-deprived rats, scientists can observe "local sleep" where parts of these rat brains shut down while the rat is still conscious. [url]
• To discover more interesting articles on the human mind, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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Filed Under: local sleep, long sleepers, polyphasic sleep, sleep

DailyDirt: When You Sleep, What Do Your Fingers Know?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Everyone sleeps, or at least everyone besides one Vietnamese guy sleeps. Some medications to help people sleep have led to weird sleep-walking behaviors, but there are plenty of other strange things that people do in their sleep. Here are just a few examples.

• Lee Hadwin is somewhat productive while he sleeps and becomes a decent sketch artist while he's unconscious. He started sleep-drawing while he was 4 years old, and he got better and better at it over the years. So apparently, the 10,000 hour rule for mastery also applies to unconscious learning. [url]
• Swiss researchers are studying how sleeping in a hammock changes people's unconscious brain activity. Gentle rocking motions seem to induce a different kind of sleep -- measurable with scalp electrodes. [url]
• Scientists at UC Berkeley have found that Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep can help relieve painful memories. Memories seem to be reactivated during REM sleep, and understanding this phenomenon may help treat post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. [url]
• To discover more interesting articles on the human mind, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: brain, memories, rem, sleep, sleep-walking, unconscious

DailyDirt: Studying Gray Matter Before We Hack It...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Our brains are pretty complex bundles of nerves -- that aren't actually like CPUs at all (even though lots of folks make the brain-CPU analogy). We're still trying to figure these wrinkled organs out with fairly primitive methods, but at least some progress is being made. Here are just a few quick links on some brain studies.

• Australian researchers think that genes may explain how 'cost-efficient' our brains are -- and ultimately how genes affect cognitive abilities. Hopefully, no one finds and patents the 'genius' genes... [url]
• The iBrain is not a new product from Apple -- it's a nifty device that records data from your brain in order to diagnose various neurological disorders. Once it's collected enough data, though, maybe it'll help in figuring out how regular brains work, too. [url]
• Sleep deprivation has been demonstrated to reduce a mouse's ability to retain memories. So try to get a good night's sleep before making any best-laid plans with mice. [url]
• To discover more interesting articles on the human mind, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: brains, genes, ibrain, memory, sleep

New Study Says Social Networks Not Making Kids Stay Up Late

from the no,-that-would-be-sms dept

While there were some studies last year claiming that heavy social networking users were likely to have lower grades (though, there were lots of problems with that study), it apparently isn't because it keeps kids up late at night. A new study that looked at students and their social networking habits didn't find much difference in the amount of sleep heavy social network users got vs. those who weren't spending all their time on Facebook and Twitter. My guess is that, with both of these things, there are so many other factors that finding any sort of causal relationship is unlikely in a simple comparison of two variables. There could be many other factors that lead to either good or bad grades, and also impact how much a person uses social networks or the amount of sleep they get. And, in the end, looking for something to blame for either really misses the point. It's an attempt to blame a technology for something else, rather than look at the real underlying reasons why a student doesn't get enough sleep or doesn't do well at school.

But, of course, don't expect that to stop the debate. As I was finishing up this post, along comes a different study that again notes a correlation between really heavy users and bad grades. But, the study also finds that for kids these days, they're pretty much online all the time somehow -- even more than the study's authors thought possible.

Filed Under: grades, kids, sleep, social networks