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  • I wonder if a 30-min nap improves the situation. But I need to tell the brain to hold the flushing until the nap.
    by ferguess_k
  • What I’m picking up here is that if I can just get an automated CSF circulator installed I won’t need to sleep or get distracted when I’m tired. That was the point of this article, right?
    by binary132
  • So... can we trigger it manually? I'd love to be able to lay down and press the 'flush brain' button.
    by 0xbadcafebee
  • What I want to know is: can we trigger these flushes? My grandfather died of/with Alzheimer’s, and I’d prefer not to follow in his footsteps. If we determine that these flushes are key to good brain health, and there were a way either through a pill or even a treatment to up the frequency of these flushes, that would be awesome.
    by gcanyon
  • Long live healthy sleep for brain health, and thank goodness light exercise helps this same glymphatic system.
    by rtaylorgarlock
  • > The scientists found that during these lapses, a wave of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flows out of the brain

    > Lewis and colleagues showed that CSF flow during sleep follows a rhythmic pattern in and out of the brain

    > Most significantly, they found a flux of CSF out of the brain just as those lapses occurred. After each lapse, CSF flowed back into the brain.

    I can't believe the authors of the article didn't address one of the most obvious questions: Where does the CSF flow to and where does it flow back from? It's not like there are pipes leading out of the brain, or the CSF will just leave my brain through my ears or anything, will it?¹ What happens with the waste products? (¹ Though it would be kinda funny if this was where snot comes from.)

    EDIT: Wikipedia's got the answer:

    > Clearing waste: CSF allows for the removal of waste products from the brain,[3] and is critical in the brain's lymphatic system, called the glymphatic system. Metabolic waste products diffuse rapidly into CSF and are removed into the bloodstream as CSF is absorbed. When this goes awry, CSF can become toxic […]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid

    by codethief
  • I hope that the actual medical field starts taking note of this.

    My wife still has to work 24 hour shifts with no sleep, performing emergency surgeries no matter how long it has been since she slept. During residency only a few years ago she and her co-residents were almost weekly required to do 36 hour shifts (on top of their regular 16 hours per day, 5 day per week schedule) and once even a 48 hour shift when the hospital was short staffed.

    Of course I’m sure they won’t. No one cares if doctors are over worked.

    by HEmanZ
  • 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.
    by earless1

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