What Is Sleep For?

[Trytostaydead]

The weird thing about it is when I get dreams of going to alternate dimensions. Where the fuck do I experience shit like that?!?

That ain't nothing jack.. I've dreamt of full symphonies and choral arrangements of songs I've never heard or poetry so beautiful it made me cry. I remember them for a few seconds after I wake up in coherent detail but never well enough to transcribe. It's a curse really. I have some problem where I can hear music in my head but I can never manifest it out in words, tune or paper.

[Pu-239]

It's when your brain gets defragged. I'm trying to reformat my brain to ext3 so that it won't need to do that so often, but so far I've had limited success.

Bah! ReiserFS is superior

[Embracer Of Darkness]

What I want to know, is what happens if you sleep too much?

After sleeping too much I've woken up with a migraine before. Are there any other effects?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Would you be surprised if I said it could be all and none of those things?

The last issue of New Scientist highlighted how 50 years ago we came up with DNA, abiogenesis and REM. Yet the latter has had no real breakthrough since, in fact, lately there have been doubts on what sleep is for.

The "defrag" concept is the most common, and for obvious reasons. Humans process a shitload of data everyday, visual, audio and others, it all has to be sorted out as engrams and kept or lost if need be. The problem arises when we find that animals like the platypus who are far less advanced than ourselves, actually undergo more REM while others have less. There is actually no relation to intelligence and REM and long wave sleep patterns, so really saying that it's for our brain to process info before we "crash" is a bit misleading.

Another theory is that the brain shutsdown into a low power mode (some animals do one hemisphere of the brain at a time in some cases) so that it can pump more calcium ions into the glial cells in the brain that aid in synapse processes, proteins are also synthesized and other ion pumps activated. Basically, this is such a large task that the brain requires the body to deactivate (hence paralysis in long wave sleep).

There are people that say REM also means nothing, others say it is important in processing and others don't know jack or think babies developed it to aid in metabolic processes and computing data gathered, a vestigeal function in adulthood.

Preocedural memory is thought in some theories to be analysed and saved in sleep. We have a short term "declarative" memory which is liek RAM, but procedural is where we keep things like how to ride a bike or walk in our brains memory so that it is perfected and always remembered.

I don't know, they say anyone of these could be true or false, I just had to ask what people thought given every animal seemingly does it and we don't really know what it's for yet.

[Rye]

I remember watching something recently on sleep.

Apparently, as stated repeatedly, it's for defragging, the mysterious scientists AKA "they" have done tests where they give a person enough physical rest but keep them awake so they don't need to sleep from exhaustion, and the results were pretty much conclusive.

It's definately something which revolves around the brain, as people really start to lose their minds if they stay awake for ages, they go all spaced out and no new information can be entered, or start hallucinating or other similar bizarre mental states.

I remember the first time i stayed awake for 2 days, i thought my voice was coming from somewhere else, as in outside of me, but then again, im probably not the best mental landscape to start from anyway.

And animals do dream, or at least mine do.

[SyntaxVorlon]

Dreaming also helps clear up ram, that means that you typically can't remember what you were thinking yesterday.

[Baron Mordo]

That ain't nothing jack.. I've dreamt of full symphonies and choral arrangements of songs I've never heard or poetry so beautiful it made me cry. I remember them for a few seconds after I wake up in coherent detail but never well enough to transcribe. It's a curse really. I have some problem where I can hear music in my head but I can never manifest it out in words, tune or paper.

Jesus, you too? I hate that! Sometimes the songs I dream of are really catchy, then I wake up and can't remember them at all. But I know I dreamed them!

[aerius]

Sleep is so that you can dream happy dreams after having vigorous sex with your partner. It also lets your body recover after having all that sex.

[Howedar]

What I want to know, is what happens if you sleep too much?

After sleeping too much I've woken up with a migraine before. Are there any other effects?

Lethargy, in my experience. I feel more rested with 9hr of sleep than 12hr.

[Dorsk 81]

Ok, so what happens to you physicaly and mentaly if you have a really messed up sleeping pattern?
Say you stay awake for around 72hours, sleep for 12, wake up for around 8 hours, sleep for 4 hours, wake up for 1, sleep for a further 2 and then stay awake for 20 hours and so on.
And what could the long term effects of it be? Say if yu were to keep this up for around 8 months.
Thats what I've beening doing since last Novemeber and the only difference I feel mentaly (as opposed to normal sleeping) is that I'm very lathargic. Physicaly I drink more coffee (strong, black, NO sugar), drink more alcohol, smoke more, eat less and seem to catch more colds etc.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Sleep is your brain's defrag program.

The ultimate proof that creationism is false is that we're so poorly designed we have to defrag every twenty-four hours.

[Dorsk 81]

Sleep is your brain's defrag program.

The ultimate proof that creationism is false is that we're so poorly designed we have to defrag every twenty-four hours.

Do you consider your nerva system or your curculitory system to be poorly designed?

[Rye]

Sleep is your brain's defrag program.

The ultimate proof that creationism is false is that we're so poorly designed we have to defrag every twenty-four hours.

Do you consider your nerva system or your curculitory system to be poorly designed?

Hell yeah. Have you seen the crocodile's pulmonary system? It can divert the blood to where it wants!

[BrYaN19kc]

What is sleep For?

WET DREAMS!

Recharge body and mental functions.

I thought the comment about it "Defraging your brain" was GREAT!

[Admiral Valdemar]

Sleep is your brain's defrag program.

The ultimate proof that creationism is false is that we're so poorly designed we have to defrag every twenty-four hours.

Do you consider your nerva system or your curculitory system to be poorly designed?

I think Marina was simply stating a fact against Creationism and jokingly too, the brain is the most complex computer known. It annoys me when people seriously underestimate how complex things are like this, like the Animatrix short The Second Renaissance Pt.2, "simple protein based body" is used to describe humans. Simple and protein are mutually exclusive.

[Master of Ossus]

A way for ones body to rest, slow down its metabolic processes and repair itself...as well as break down proteins

Not actually. Sleep is only required by the brain. Rest is sufficient to allow muscles, bone, and other miscelaneous tissues to repair themselves.

[Darth Yoshi]

Sleep is a combo of defrag and standby.

[Shaka[Zulu]]

well, heres my take on what happens -- in no particular order... it might even be going on simultaneously.

this is using the brain as computer analogy, so it is assumed that the brain posesses the following memory types:

cache, for real time sensory data storage. extremely high bandwidth, very short response times.

short term memory, also known as system RAM, for the obvious purposes -- slower with less bandwidth than the cache, but alot more of it

long term memory -- the hard drive -- HUGE capacity, convoluted file structure (things get lost easy), slow to access.

anyway... on with it:

defrag of LTM

review of cache contents -- the days sensory data

editing of cache contents -- assign various levels of resolution, priority (long term/short term/both) and compression for the data, discarding junk

compression/resizing of cache data

review of short term data for long term storage or continued short term

[Slartibartfast]

I consider sleep more a "commit" than a "defrag".
But I work with databases, so a lot of people here might not get what I mean.
Basically saving the data from RAM into hard disk, or short term mem into long term mem. That while the body does a lot of other kinds of shit.

[haas mark]

Been bugging me to post such a question lately, but what, in your mind, is sleep for do you think?

I shall check back later and post some of the main theories used today.

To be honest, I wish I knew.

:P Just kidding.

Really, though, it's so that you don't get to much physical exertion (I think) and so that you can go a certain amount of time without doing anything where your body recovers from whatever damage you've done to it, and so that it can exercise what it normally can't do (at it's best) during the day.

~ver

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Sleep is for sexual fantasies and dreaming what your life would be like on crack (I've noticed that many of my dreams involve wierd things).

[Dorsk 81]

The ultimate proof that creationism is false is that we're so poorly designed we have to defrag every twenty-four hours.

Do you consider your nerva system or your curculitory system to be poorly designed?

I think Marina was simply stating a fact against Creationism and jokingly too, the brain is the most complex computer known. It annoys me when people seriously underestimate how complex things are like this, like the Animatrix short The Second Renaissance Pt.2, "simple protein based body" is used to describe humans. Simple and protein are mutually exclusive.

Yea, I kinda got that. Another point to that would be that we're the most intelligent species on the planet, yet alot of other less evolved creatures still require the same amount of sleep.
I've seen that Animatrix, it was pretty cool.
No matter how far we go and what we do we've still gotta remember that we are just a bunch of cells that just happen to be put together in a way that makes us advanced compared to other species...

[Pablo Sanchez]

I think Marina was simply stating a fact against Creationism and jokingly too, the brain is the most complex computer known. It annoys me when people seriously underestimate how complex things are like this, like the Animatrix short The Second Renaissance Pt.2, "simple protein based body" is used to describe humans. Simple and protein are mutually exclusive.

It has a meaning in nutrition... I think...

Sleep is needed for mental housecleaning, IMO. When I once challenged myself to remain awake as long as possible, I started have gray spaces. I would suddenly jerk and the clock had advanced 30 minutes. I could remember watching TV, and what I had watched, but not any details. I had a friend verify that I was awake during these periods.

"You were awake. What were you watching?"
"Seinfeld."
"What episode?"
"Uh... the one with Jerry?"

[Pablo Sanchez]

Yea, I kinda got that. Another point to that would be that we're the most intelligent species on the planet, yet alot of other less evolved creatures still require the same amount of sleep.

I think it's mostly the higher mammals that have to get a lot of sleep, per se. A lot of birds and reptiles can just go into a reduced capacity mode, from which they can instantly "awake" and defend themselves. That's another reason I think sleep is tied to higher brain functions.

[Shaka[Zulu]]

Sleep is needed for mental housecleaning, IMO. When I once challenged myself to remain awake as long as possible, I started have gray spaces. I would suddenly jerk and the clock had advanced 30 minutes. I could remember watching TV, and what I had watched, but not any details. I had a friend verify that I was awake during these periods.

"You were awake. What were you watching?"
"Seinfeld."
"What episode?"
"Uh... the one with Jerry?"

that is a symptom of the brain having to devote large amounts of processing power to do all the stuff it normally does in sleep mode like compressing memories for long-term storage and freeing up sysRAM and cacheRAM. these operations are so CPU intensive that when the brain starts doing them, everything else gets put on a back burner, hence the gray spaces. think of your comp running SETI@Home, or running a multipass VBR DVD to XSVCD rip/encode with resizing and editing of the original stream for content. unless you have a duallie (or quadro) and keep the process locked to a single CPU, you arent gonna be able to get much of ANYTHING else done till that job is over. maybe some word processing, or web browsin -- but thats it, forget about say a bout of unreal2 or Homeworld.