[HN Gopher] Brain-cleaning sleeping cap gets US Army funding
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Brain-cleaning sleeping cap gets US Army funding
Author : sahin
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-10-02 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| elric wrote:
| Is there any evidence that neuromodulation can actually impact
| the glymphatic system and stimulate the flow of fluids?
|
| Do we know how the glymphatic system works in enough detail yet?
| This sounds like a useful research tool full of interesting
| sensors. But referring to it as "brain cleaning" strikes me as
| premature.
| Jensson wrote:
| Isn't the point that they fund it because they think it might
| be able to perform "brain cleaning"? If that is the intent then
| the title that they fund a "brain cleaning" cap is accurate, it
| might never work though.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Headlines from 2055:
|
| _Ransomware gang releases man from MyBrain sleeping cap after
| family pays $10M_
|
| _CEO: users can opt-out of dream-based ads, monitoring -- but
| face degraded platform experience_
|
| _Police use bulk collection of brain data for secretive
| warrants_
| ptr2voidStar wrote:
| Why can't people see this happening? The ability for most of
| humanity to be distracted by "shiny things" never ceases to
| amaze me.
| sneak wrote:
| I would prefer this to the current situation where the sponsor
| of the development is doing so in an effort to increase the
| effectiveness of its staff to commit mass murder under adverse
| conditions.
|
| Pathological profit-based motivation is vastly preferable to
| pathological death-based motivation.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| "That's why the military developed dream sharing - a training
| program where soldiers could strangle, stab and shoot each
| other, then wake up."
| crooked-v wrote:
| I have to wonder how much of this support is the military trying
| to find a technological workaround so they can keep using
| schedules that intentionally leave everyone sleep deprived all
| the time, instead of just adjusting those schedules to let people
| get enough sleep.
|
| While the worst cases of that are generally in the Navy (for
| example, entire ship crews running on 4 hours of a sleep a night
| as standard practice, serving as a major factor in those lethal
| collisions back in 2017), it's pretty common for Army grunts to
| get six hours of sleep a night or less while on deployment.
| foota wrote:
| Imagine if we could largely eliminate sleep, it seems like
| science fiction for now, but what if?
| ex3xu wrote:
| FDA approval for transcranial electric/magnetic stimulation has
| been around since 2008 for major depression, 2013 for migraines,
| and 2018 for OCD [0], so it wouldn't surprise me if they hold
| some therapeutic value for sleep disorders as well.
|
| I just hope these devices are particularly well-regulated for
| sleep, however, because I imagine sending the wrong signal for
| even a few nights' sleep could do some serious damage.
|
| [0] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-
| perm...
| krylon wrote:
| The title is somewhat misleading, I think. Nevertheless, this
| sounds like very interesting research.
|
| It is astonishing how much we have learned about the brain and
| how it works, but there so much to learn I doubt we will ever run
| out of questions to ask.
| antegamisou wrote:
| You sure you didn't mean to say
|
| > It is astonishing how little we have learned about the brain
| and how it works
|
| ?
| kiba wrote:
| Is it?
|
| With physics, we haven't uncovered anything new that would lead
| to whole new technologies.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| Except... we cannot predict how future folks will be able to
| use e.g. neutrinos to achieve some fantastic future tech. And
| apart from the sheer desire to 'understand the world',
| physics research is giving future technologists some
| phenomena to (possibly) exploit.
| drdeca wrote:
| I'm skeptical that future technologies will have much use
| for neutrinos specifically. Facts discovered via the study
| of neutrinos, that seems quite plausible, but I doubt there
| will ever be much use for neutrinos directly.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Well, if you want _really_ low latency comms with
| somewhere approximately on the other side of the world,
| all you need is a very big particle accelerator, and a
| neutrino detector :) (or two of each, really).
|
| I'm sure the high frequency trading people would love
| it...
| amelius wrote:
| That would only speed it up by a factor of pi/2.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| What? Like half of all modern tech is built out of weird
| physics. Photoelectric effect, liquid crystals, transistors,
| most camera improvements, capacitive touch - all applications
| of discoveries in physics.
| Sosh101 wrote:
| In what way is it misleading?
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