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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: 0.2s | 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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blauditore ◴[31 Oct 25 15:24 UTC] No.45773081[source]▶
Fun fact: Suppressed/hidden/lost memories due to trauma that appear to re-surface through therapy are not a real thing, as previously thought (and still by some psychotherapists). Nowadays it's understood by psychology that any memories "re-surfacing" in therapy are in fact newly created, although the patient themselves cannot tell the difference. Allegedly, whole accusations of childhood abuse may have been created out of thin air, without the victim realizing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy (see research section)

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layer8 ◴[31 Oct 25 15:40 UTC] No.45773304[source]▶
People can remember things that hadn’t re-entered their mind for decades. It certainly happened to me a number of times (completely trauma-unrelated and not actively elicited).
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worldsayshi ◴[31 Oct 25 15:50 UTC] No.45773439[source]▶
My guess is that long term memory recovery is inherently a reconstruction from the pieces that you have retained. So it is not unlikely to include dreamed up parts.
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1. bpj ◴[31 Oct 25 17:08 UTC] No.45774286[source]▶
This has been my experience as someone who has experienced childhood trauma, and what I've inferred from my therapist. He taught me that the memories I have are typically exaggerations of what happened and it's hard to pin down what truly happened. The only evidence I have that has any merit is my siblings can corroborate with similar experiences since it happened to all of us, and I'm sensitive to things related to these traumas. Almost every day I can feel the things that happened, and on my worst days these areas are much more sensitive.

On top of that, I have legitimate memories that were not traumatic, but still related to the same traumas because said person attempted to encourage these activities throughout my young life on rare occasions. I didn't remember what happened as a kid, but I knew something wasn't right and I wasn't comfortable. It wasn't until I was almost 30 that I had my first "flashback" which was a fractured memory, I still remember it looked like a faded photograph in my mind, and it was accompanied by an extremely uncomfortable feeling.

The re-surfacing memories aren't real in a sense, but in my case they aren't entirely fake either.

I wonder if it's possible that things can be completely imagined with absolutely no basis what-so-ever in certain circumstances, and I also wonder how difficult it is to discern that. It seems to be a difficult concept to manage.