[HN Gopher] Sleep deprivation disrupts memory
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Sleep deprivation disrupts memory
Author : sabrina_ramonov
Score : 178 points
Date : 2024-06-14 14:39 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| k1ck4ss wrote:
| now I feel very bad about going to sleep between 11PM and 1AM and
| getting up between 5AM and 6AM for many many years now.
| failuser wrote:
| Why? Do you experience memory issues? If you can do that for
| years and not go insane or break down you must be built
| different. I know people like that and envy them, but this is
| not typical.
| sethammons wrote:
| Since I became a sleep maintenance insomniac (I fall asleep
| fine but wake up 5hrs later and generally can't fall back
| asleep), my memory has gone from phenomenal to abysmal. I
| struggle to keep things in mind. More than ever, I rely on
| notes and reminders
| JohnBooty wrote:
| That seems like possibly the hardest kind of insomnia to
| treat.
|
| Is there any treatment for this specific kind of insomnia?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| When that happens to me it's often because I'm ruminating
| about something, can't get it out of my mind and relax.
| If that's what's keeping you up, CBT (cognitive
| behavorial therapy) techniques can help to stop that
| thought pattern, or just taking some daily action (any
| concrete action besides just turning it over in your
| mind) towards resolving the thing you're thinking about
| can help.
|
| White noise sometimes helps me sleep too, especially
| after waking up in the middle of the night.
| eggdaft wrote:
| My theory is this is cause by stress hormones.
|
| You can get to sleep because you're so damn exhausted,
| but you wake up as soon as you're physically able because
| of the hormones.
|
| The answer is exercise. Aerobic and weights. Three times
| a week minimum. And for a good amount of time.
| weeksie wrote:
| I have issues with that as well, started taking magnesium
| (both normal, elemental magnesium and magnesium
| l-threonate) and it's made a world of difference for me.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > this is not typical
|
| going to sleep between 11PM and 1AM and getting up between
| 5AM and 6AM is completely typical for a parent with kids in
| school.
|
| OK 1AM might be pushing it but by the time you eat dinner,
| help with homework, do chores, get the kids to bed, and take
| a bit of time for yourself and spouse to decompress, yeah
| it's easily getting close to 11PM.
|
| Then getting up in time to get dressed, get the kids up, make
| breakfast, get them to school and get yourself to work,
| you're probably getting out of bed at aroud 6AM or maybe 7AM
| at the latest.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Last I spoke to a sleep doctor, I was told that 6-8 hours
| is enough sleep for a lot of people.
|
| That would mean 11-5 is is actually enough sleep, as is
| 12-6
|
| So really the problem with these times is only the
| incidents when staying up to 1am, or when getting up at 5
| after sleeping at midnight
| failuser wrote:
| 11PM to 6AM is very different from 1AM to 5AM. Parents of
| little children who need you to wake up multiple times per
| night have it worse, IMO. And they often report memory
| problems and overall mental decline.
| pcurve wrote:
| If you've been doing if for many years chances are you are one
| of those folks who don't need as much sleep. Apparently there
| is genetics involved
|
| https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-id...
| inanutshellus wrote:
| It's more concerning if he intentionally deprived himself of
| sleep during adolescence (e.g. forcibly staying up to play
| video games), as brain development continues through age 25.
| neilv wrote:
| The Web page is breaking text selection for me until I disable
| JS.
| jessetemp wrote:
| I've had the same problem. In my case it was uBlock hiding the
| full page cookie dialog but the dialog was still disabling text
| selection. I really wish websites would just respectfully set
| the minimum by default and let users opt in to the extra
| tracking. Then reward those users with internet points or
| something. People go nuts for internet points.
|
| Regarding the article itself... I always wonder (while laying
| awake at night) what impact trains have on people's mental
| health. I'm thankfully not close enough to get woken up by
| them, but they roll through at like 1am, horns blaring at every
| hint of an intersection. It's gotta be measurably unhealthy for
| people living near the tracks
| bowsamic wrote:
| Please keep comments focussed on the content
| neilv wrote:
| In case someone wanted to quote text for discussion, now they
| know to turn off JS.
| bowsamic wrote:
| It is against the rules here to comment on the form of the
| website itself. Remain focussed on the content
| neilv wrote:
| One line, informing people how they can quote text from
| the article under discussion, vs. a cascade of policy
| meta-discussion? :)
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yes
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| The mention of deep sleep being necessary to memory formation is
| especially interesting to me.
|
| I went 5-8 years or so with poor quality sleep. While it is
| difficult to estimate correctly at home, my Zeo was regularly
| giving me 15-20m of deep sleep a night and I had a very hard time
| fixing it. While I performed fine at work, I had a hard time
| recovering from any sort of physical symptoms (such as tension)
| and building muscle memory. I certainly felt pretty bad, and it
| was like things didn't 'stick'.
|
| Nowadays I get 40m on average. Still not great but getting
| better.
| thesuavefactor wrote:
| May I ask what you did to improve your deep sleep?
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Hard to pin it on any one thing unfortunately.
|
| I notice it goes up when I'm doing as much as I can of the
| following: get 20-30m sunlight, talk with friends in person,
| avoid alcohol, work out, and be more active in building my
| life (vs having it built for me). Also, doing necessary
| emotional work with a counselor. All of those IME reduce my
| low grade anxiety.
|
| It's basically all eating your vegetables stuff. Way more
| impactful than any supplement or protocol.
|
| N=1 and all that. HTH
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Not the OP, but first of all you need enough time. If you
| constantly have only 5-6 hours of sleep per day then there is
| nothing what would help.
|
| But if you have enough time than you need to try everything,
| beginning with air quality, noise and light reduction,
| bedding quality.
| chasebank wrote:
| One of the first episodes in the huberman podcast, he
| references a study where insomnia was cured in 100% of study
| participants by taking them camping for a week. I think
| sleeping is like weight loss, it's really simple but people
| don't want to do what's necessary. Non-sedentary lifestyle,
| eat right, wake up and go to sleep with sun, don't use
| electronics, etc.
| vundercind wrote:
| Only candles after dark (I could read comfortably by two
| beeswax candles, _very_ dim light compared even to most
| night lights) and no electronics entirely cured my
| "insomnia" of decades within a couple days. Go figure,
| hundreds or thousands of candle-power lighting up whole
| rooms, and entertainment more compelling than a Roman
| emperor could command on tap, is extremely bad for sleep.
| What a surprise.
|
| It's goddamn hard to keep up, though.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Pro tip: use RGB light strips for room lighting and set
| them to pure red an hour or two before sleep.
|
| I don't have any trouble sleeping, but that's what I do
| when someone requires me to suddenly disrupt my sleeping
| schedule so I can get up at some ungodly early hour and
| it's the only way I can go to sleep sooner than usual and
| actually fall asleep.
|
| If you really wanted to do it every day it would make far
| more sense to automate it and make it gradual to simulate
| a sunset though.
| vitehozonage wrote:
| I dislike how you frame it as a personal failure to do what
| is necessary. It is a societal failure. People may have
| strong self-control, and want to have completely more
| primitive lifestyle which would likely improve their mental
| state, but escaping the industrial society can be simply
| out of reach for many people. For example if you're poor
| and born in a city-state you may never even have the
| capacity to experience camping.
| piuantiderp wrote:
| Individual problems have individual solutions.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I disagree that they are individual problems. This isn't
| Sparta. Many of the negative mental health externalities
| were created either inadvertently or deliberately to
| maximize shareholder (read: wealthy, mostly older people)
| money. It's irresponsible.
|
| And notice I didn't say value. Profiting off of making
| another person doesn't add value. It extracts it from
| them, like the scream extractor in Monsters Inc.
| gfourfour wrote:
| Being outside for an hour during sunset is the best sleep
| medicine. Don't even have to go camping.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Episode 2 was about sleep. But the transcript had no
| matches for insomnia or camping.[1]
|
| It sounds like a distorted memory of a small study where
| subjects without sleep disorders slept earlier but not
| longer or better when camping with natural light and fire
| only.[2] How long the effect lasted was not studied.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm1TxQj9IsQ
|
| [2] https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(13)...
| consf wrote:
| > I think sleeping is like weight loss, it's really simple
| but people don't want to do what's necessary.
|
| What an excellent comparison
| tivert wrote:
| > May I ask what you did to improve your deep sleep?
|
| I think Steve Gibson (of the Security Now podcast, and
| absolutely not a doctor), had a "healthy sleep formula" of
| taking a time release melatonin and a time-release
| niacinamide supplement, and he claimed his Zeo would register
| more deep when he took it. I got the impression he thought
| his own sleep was poor and was trying to fix it, and just
| talked about his personal project on his podcast.
|
| I tried it, and anecdotally I did feel like I slept deeper.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| In my case - I've had sleep problems for a decade - it
| started to improve once my kids stopped waking me up 3-4
| times a night.
|
| It's still not as good as it was before as I've not been able
| to get sporting properly and, well, they kids do wake us just
| not every night anymore.
| alexpotato wrote:
| There was a post here on Hacker News many years ago about a
| software developer who became a bicycle messenger.
|
| One point from that post related to this discussion:
|
| "Once I became a bike messenger, I slept like a log for 8 hours
| every night."
|
| In my own life, having worked both manual, physical labor and
| been a tech worker, I noticed the following:
|
| - When I worked construction, my body would be exhausted but my
| mind would be very active when I tried to go to sleep.
|
| - In tech work, it's my mind that is exhausted but my body
| still has energy
|
| - I've also worked jobs that required a high amount of both
| physical and mental focus and that's when I usually sleep the
| deepest.
| jajko wrote:
| Good old saying - if you work hard manually, rest by doing
| something mentally challenging, and vice versa. For most of
| us vice versa applies hard.
|
| I do something every day or evening, even if its just 1.5-2h
| evening walks. Days I don't do anything are definitely harder
| to fall asleep, to say the least, and some small achievement
| is missing.
| yamrzou wrote:
| > To Diba's surprise, rats that were woken up repeatedly had
| similar, or even higher, levels of sharp-wave-ripple activity
| than the rodents that got normal sleep did. But the firing of the
| ripples was weaker and less organized, showing a marked decrease
| in repetition of previous firing patterns.
|
| I wonder what would happen if their sleep was disrupted in a
| "regular" way, thus creating new firing patterns..
| JohnBooty wrote:
| sleep disruption could be used to prevent memories from
| entering long-term storage, which could be useful for
| people who have recently experienced something
| traumatic, such as those with post-traumatic stress
| disorder
|
| This makes sense, but it's hard to see how this would work in
| practice.
|
| You'd have to induce this sleep deprivation right after the
| traumatic event. "Sorry you watched your house burn down today
| with your favorite hamster inside. Here's some modafinil so you
| won't sleep for two days. It will help you not remember this."
| LoganDark wrote:
| Bleh. At that point just dissociate. By the time you've got
| PTSD symptoms it's usually too late to simply prevent memories
| from being recorded.
| bitcoin_anon wrote:
| I've always wondered why it's hard to sleep after stress and
| anxiety. Seems counterproductive, but perhaps it is adaptive.
| 01100011 wrote:
| > people who have recently experienced something traumatic
|
| As a parent of a 5 month old baby, I can say that nature has
| already provided a mechanism for this to work. If it were not
| for the lack of memories of the first 3 months, I would never
| agree to have another child. It appears evolution has found a
| use for this quirk of our brains already.
| swatcoder wrote:
| When you say "in practice", you're thinking of artificially
| operationalizing it and how one would force that through
| medication or whatever. Of course that would be hard to
| sensibly apply in practice! How would you distinguish a
| traumatizing experience from a manageably negative one in time
| to formulate a prescription, how would you prescribe
| wakefulness to someone who didn't seek it themselves, how do
| you know how much wakefulness is appropriate or what other
| trouble you might be causing by artificially amplifying it?
|
| But if you step back, the real "in practice" is the thing that
| bodies already do. Sleep is often a mess after truly shocking
| experiences, and this mechanism suggests some reason why. For
| the folk that need scientific studies to justify things that
| their bodies naturally want to do, this is the study that says
| it's okay to toss and turn and have weird sleep hours when
| something bad happens.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I've attempted that in the past out of similar naive idea. I
| didn't use any stimulants, just slept on a chair without proper
| blankets. It did seem to get rid of a lot of unwanted data,
| though it also posed cognitive penalties, possibly some
| permanent. I guess it's a last resort option, not something
| generally recommendable.
| alexpotato wrote:
| I imagine this correlates somewhat with having children.
|
| It's both a "traumatic" single event (especially for the
| mother) and also traumatic over time in that your sleep
| schedule is affected, big changes to your life etc.
|
| People joke that evolution made it so we don't remember how
| hard it is to have small children but maybe there is some truth
| to that statement.
| etiam wrote:
| I severely doubt messing with sense-making and coherence of
| traumatic episodes is going to prove beneficial.
| 42lux wrote:
| It feels accurate to me. Whenever I experience a manic episode,
| my sleep patterns are severely disrupted. Often, I don't sleep at
| all, or I manage only brief 1-2 hour naps. During these periods,
| my memories become fragmented and disjointed, making it difficult
| to recall events clearly. The weeks or even months during these
| episodes blend together, creating a haze of scattered memories.
| methuselah_in wrote:
| Because anything on earth requires rest. There is a limit in
| universe for everything. Now science I know neuron and all. But
| that's my perception
| jorisboris wrote:
| Can confirm, ever since having children my memory is pretty poor.
| Baby brains they call it.
| tantony wrote:
| I have personally experienced this. I went to a concert in NY
| while living in the midwest. I was a pretty broke grad-student at
| the time and hence opted not to get a hotel for the night before
| the return flight. The concert ended late and we reached the
| airport by around 3:30 AM for a 7AM flight. I think I took some
| naps at the gate before the flight and got very little sleep on
| the flights.
|
| I barely remember anything from that night. The concert itself is
| mostly blank except for one or two moments. I remember some
| moments of driving late at night afterwards (getting lost at one
| point) and having a very late night dinner at an IHOP. I barely
| remember getting on my connecting flight.
|
| Overall a very surreal experience.
|
| Now I make it a point to get proper sleep on such trips. What is
| the point of doing these things anyway if we don't get to keep
| the memories?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I've attempted to use the effect strategically. Not sure if it
| really worked or not. It's certainly not healthy, and it
| certainly didn't improve the quality of my work, but I've
| pushed thru some unpleasant times with an eye toward trying not
| to form long-term memories by way of sleep deprivation.
| liquid_bluing wrote:
| Smart move:
|
| Sleep deprivation facilitates extinction of implicit fear
| generalization and physiological response to fear - PubMed
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20889142/
|
| "Clinically, trauma-exposed victims often experience acute
| insomnia, indicating that such insomnia might provide
| prophylactic benefits in reducing the development of
| posttraumatic stress disorder via extinction of the fear-
| magnifying effects of memory."
| whitehexagon wrote:
| My dreams are so vivid, and movie like, that I frequently wake up
| very tired. My memory is shockingly poor, and I have often
| wondered if it could be connected to poor quality sleep. I also
| suffer from Aphantasia and suspect the vivid dreams are somehow
| compensating for that. Mostly it feels like 40years programming
| has rewired my brain!
| cljacoby wrote:
| I'm 29 years old, and I have definitely noticed my memory getting
| worse over the last ~5 years. I've always wondered if this is
| something to do with sleep deprivation, increased stress from
| work/school, or just the natural effects of getting older.
| xcv123 wrote:
| Try doing a 24 hour water fast. It will feel awful during the
| fast, but you may notice your mind is sharper the next day
| after a good sleep. Cleans out the cobwebs at a cellular level
| (autophagy).
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/
|
| EDIT: I'm getting rate limited so cannot reply to the comment
| below.
|
| Water fast means only drinking water. Tea or coffee is
| acceptable if black (meaning without milk or sugar).
|
| "Water fasting is a type of fast during which you're not
| allowed to consume anything except water."
|
| I would never do a fast that cuts out water/liquids. That is
| stupid.
| LtWorf wrote:
| How to die with one simple trick!
| xcv123 wrote:
| Most people browsing HN would survive 1 - 2 months without
| food. 24 hours is nothing. Your pot belly has a spare
| 50,000 calories.
| LtWorf wrote:
| If you read the comment. He said to "water fast", not
| just skip food, which would be probably fine.
|
| Also, not everyone is obese. For not obese active people,
| it might not be the best.
| darajava wrote:
| Fasting is incredibly well tolerated and good for you. The
| longest a person has gone without food was about 380 days
| (Angus Barberi)
| LtWorf wrote:
| Read before comment? He said to "water fast", which I
| presume means not drink.
| nine_k wrote:
| This works, I corroborate.
|
| The problem is not a lack of will or capability to sleep for
| 8 hours a day. It's usually the lack of ability to allocate 8
| hours, because of various commitments and other
| circumstances.
|
| (It's like telling a poor guy to start saving some money.
| While it's technically absolutely correct, the problem is
| usually not the lack of the desire to have savings.)
| catoc wrote:
| "Try doing a 24 hour water fast"
|
| In the referenced study water was available ad libitum.
|
| It's _food_ that was restricted, for 24-48 hours, that
| promoted beneficial cellular autophagy in mice.
|
| [Longer ("chronic") fasting was detrimental (in rats, further
| removed from humans; (and not examined in that paper, just
| referenced))]
|
| [This is why I like HN, replies backed up with literature
| references to further meaningful interpretation and
| discussion #ThumbsUp!)
|
| EDIT: TIL: a _"water fast"_ is not fasting on water but on
| food... with ample water.... should be called a "water feast"
| josu wrote:
| It's cool to back it up with data, but any parent who has looked
| after a newborn knows this.
| precompute wrote:
| The key to beating this is being self-aware and figuring out when
| your brain's maintenance cycles are bleeding into your waking
| thoughts. And use something to cover your eyes while sleeping,
| even if it's dark outside.
| eggdaft wrote:
| Hi Hacker News I'm Captain Obvious and I'm here to tell you (and
| myself) an uncomfortable truth that most of us kinda know but
| really can't face up to.
|
| Many of us have sleep problems.
|
| We don't have the healthiest lifestyles. Lots of screen use,
| being very sedentary, many of us eating bad food (it's quick! I
| can get back to thjngs). Denis Nedry is not a
| mischaracterisation.
|
| It's not true for absolutely everyone but for the vast majority
| of people the answer is super simple. You need to exercise. Not
| even a ton. Three times a week will probably do it. Some cardio
| some weights, each visit to the gym a decent workout.
|
| This will cost you PS40-PS90 a month. That's about the cost of
| various Adobe Creative Cloud packages, which enable you to make
| mediocre graphics on your home personal computer.
|
| for the same price as those photo tweaks you can get: improved
| longevity, improved all round health, protection against RSI and
| back problems, hugely reduced stress levels, improved levels of
| focus and happiness and better relationships. Hey, keep it up for
| a bit and you'll even get a bit buff and your partner might like
| that.
|
| We all know this and yet we all seek alternative explanations and
| remedies: eye masks, Vit D, meditation, dietary fads... because
| they're so much easier than 2 hour trips to the gym a few times a
| week. Sure for some people those things are real but for the rest
| of us it's just procrastination because:
|
| The gym isn't very fun.
|
| Get over it. Put a podcast on, start small, accept that Tuesday
| night and Thursday night are going to be mostly lost to the gym
| and just enjoy the journey there and enjoy the music or podcast
| accompaniment. It's a tax on living. Pay now or pay much more
| later, your choice.
|
| I struggle with this so hard, but I'm trying ringo, I'm trying,
| and you should too.
| manmal wrote:
| Funnily I saw this just yesterday: ,,Dihydromyricetin ameliorates
| memory impairment induced by acute sleep deprivation"
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30876981/
|
| Nootropics Depot now retails this (not affiliated).
| consf wrote:
| Now reading Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by
| Matthew Walker. Recommend
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