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Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation due to flushing fluid from brain

(news.mit.edu)
589 points gmays | 1 comments | 31 Oct 25 13:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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earless1 ◴[31 Oct 25 14:40 UTC] No.45772465[source]▶
So biological garbage collection pauses then? skip sleep, and the brain tries to run gc cycles during runtime. Causing attention and performance latency spikes. Evolution wrote the original JVM.
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layer8 ◴[31 Oct 25 14:47 UTC] No.45772560[source]▶
Luckily it doesn’t clear all unreferenced memory, though.
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ghurtado ◴[31 Oct 25 16:04 UTC] No.45773625[source]▶
I realize you're making a joke, but there is no such thing as "unreferenced memories", as in, something that is no longer in use and has been removed from the brain.

Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there, even if most are beyond conscious access. Memories quite literally become a permanent part of you.

A lot of people mistakenly think of human memory as a sort of hard drive with limited capacity, with files being deleted to make room for new ones. It's very much not like that.

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1. lux_sprwhk ◴[31 Oct 25 16:35 UTC] No.45773941[source]▶
I had this experience at Big Bend State park that makes me think they are. I didn't bring enough water and camped in the primitive area. At night, I was dehydrated pretty bad. When I finally got a little sleep (it was tough to say the least), I had this vivid dream where I put a pebble in my mouth and started sucking on it to make saliva. Then I woke up for real, and I knew it because there was a lot of wind IRL, that wasn't in the dream. So I took out a coin from my back, put it in my mouth to make saliva, and got a little bit of relief. Enough for a couple hours until it was dawn, and had enough light to hike down to the restroom area.

I don't know where I got this trick. Likely some survival show or some novel. But I don't have any background in survival, otherwise, I would have brought a lot more water.

So my brain knew there was a memory that could help and made up a dream about it is my theory.