Comment by greggsy
1 year ago
Is anyone more knowledgeable able to interpret the paper beyond ‘brain waves wash toxins’?
Are they actually responsible for the observed activity, or do they merely trigger some ‘flushing’ mechanism inherent to the cells? Or, are the waves a result of that process?
I can't find free access to the full paper, but here's the abstract (afraid I'm not knowledgeable enough to add to or explain any of it):
"The accumulation of metabolic waste is a leading cause of numerous neurological disorders, yet we still have only limited knowledge of how the brain performs self-cleansing. Here we demonstrate that neural networks synchronize individual action potentials to create large-amplitude, rhythmic and self-perpetuating ionic waves in the interstitial fluid of the brain. These waves are a plausible mechanism to explain the correlated potentiation of the glymphatic flow1,2 through the brain parenchyma. Chemogenetic flattening of these high-energy ionic waves largely impeded cerebrospinal fluid infiltration into and clearance of molecules from the brain parenchyma. Notably, synthesized waves generated through transcranial optogenetic stimulation substantially potentiated cerebrospinal fluid-to-interstitial fluid perfusion. Our study demonstrates that neurons serve as master organizers for brain clearance. This fundamental principle introduces a new theoretical framework for the functioning of macroscopic brain waves."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38418877/
>Chemogenetic flattening of these high-energy ionic waves largely impeded cerebrospinal fluid infiltration into and clearance of molecules from the brain parenchyma.
Sounds like unsync'd brain waves, (being awake) impedes cerebrospinal fluid flow through the brain.
When asleep, neurons sync their action potentials, acting like a ionized fluid pump, moving old dirty cerebrospinal fluid out, and allowing new, clean in.
Interestingly, when they synthesize that type of ionization using other means, they saw the same increase in fluid movement.
This is my best attempt at translating. Hopefully within 1-2 football fields. The author leaves choice of American or the rest of the world to the reader to decide.
As someone in this field (research field not football field) I'd say that is an excellent layman explanation.
I wonder if these waves also help in “resetting” the distribution of ions among the CSF so neurons will continue to have the proper ion gradients for firing their action potentials?
I wonder if this state could be ultrasonically induced to have a "sleep helmet" which can calm and align rhythmic waves? and induce an artificial flush or "power nap"
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Well, thats basically the trope of every Cybernetic design, with the connectors comming out the back of head/spine...
Like a continual wash which keeps you in this suspended hyper-aware, but calm, rested and focused mental state.
This is why cyborgs have such incredible reflexes.
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> Here we demonstrate that neural networks synchronize individual action potentials to create large-amplitude, rhythmic and self-perpetuating ionic waves in the interstitial fluid of the brain
This line is the money shot. An action potential is the variable electrical charge of a neuron, and they maintain that charge by containing a certain concentration of ions relative to the surrounding cerebrospinal fluid. This paper proposes that neurons synchonise their charge state, which forces ions to flow in or out of the neurons in bulk, the movement of these ions causing the cerebrospinal fluid to move around, clearing out the accumulated debris.
I’d expect that it’s probably not the ion movement but the global electric field, maybe even mechanical effects in the axons.
If you look at the Goldstein-Katz equations you see that the conductivities play an as important role as the concentrations.
Most of the voltage change is driven by changes in conductivities and not concentration changes, the ion movements across the membrane should be negligible.
Off course you have the free ions outside the cells than diffuse in a field gradient.
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Do these wave of stimulation cause dreaming as a side effect?
In another comment I talked about how I observed a phenomena similar to the one described where neuronal activations would create waves, I've quoted it here. I would summarize it as 3D waves of light, resulting in a spherical enamation that readjusts the physical substrate of the mind and body.
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I tried to observe the phenomena yesterday again and couldn't observe it but it was very specifically this in the past: spherical orbs of white light expanding from a centre. There were many of these, and my perception was that the nature of this geometric expanding shape was healing. To describe it more clearly, many years ago I felt that the perfect geometric spherical nature of these expanding waves were designed to gently round off rough edges. To make an analogy, imagine kneading some play dough over and over again. When you use your hands to do so, every time your hands make contact with the play dough, the play dough changes shape slightly because of the contact between your hands and the play dough and it gets softer. Now apply this concept to the idea of energetic waves making contact and passing through the material substrate of the brain and the rest of the body (yes I observed the waves applying to more than just my mind). It was my physical and conscious perception that as the spherical waves emanated from some center, they gently readjusted the physical substrate that they passed through. And because there were so many of them in different spatial locations, this readjustment was incredibly refined.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could periodically trigger waves like this to refresh the brain and maybe require less (or no) sleep!
I have no expertise in this area I’m just a dreamer :)
That's been in use for thousands of years already: yoga, pranayama and meditation.
There are courses one can take where one learns this, like Art of Living and any other that follows the same traditions.
Yes, there's research on that, and new studies should absolutely gain from this study. Not entirely sure you'll observe the same effect, that depends on meditator, but you can fall asleep during practice.
I have over a decade experience with it, and have also participated on a study on breathing exercises and epigenetic effects from that versus blind control.
I think the point of replacing sleep is to save time.
Replacing hours of sleep with hours of yogo or mediation seems like you are not gaining anything.
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Which exercises would you say trigger movement of cerebrospinal dluid in the brain?
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It's hilarious to me that these practices are laughed off, trivialized through memes and hyper-objectivity (science can't evaluate their value in a practical manner -> "Lulz hippie-dippie nonsense for ditzy/ungrounded women!!!!" -- Western dolt). Its insane considering their benefits...that are of course tragically perfect for those who would never participate
Of course that's a huge generality, I'd say it may be 1 out of 5 people like that in the US, but its the fact that it is not constrained to any particular demographic/background.
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For companies it'd be a dream. 1/4 more awake time is 1/4 more time to buy stuff and watch content and ads. Or work longer hours. Gonna go back to sleep now.
Sounds like a win-win.
Let's say my discretionary spending is 30% of my income, it goes up by a third, and I need to work 10% longer hours. Okay, so I adjust to a 44 hour work week and I get an extra 30+ hours of free time? Great!
Definitely get some sleep. Your post suggests you're getting less than five hours a night.
the immediate use doesnt have to buy more shit.
it could be used in endurance/focused events. high stress relief, traumatic brain injury - like immediate induce afte cte event in foot ball
head trauma in car accident
ODs etc...
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When I was a baby, and I would get ill, my mom would calm me and put me to sleep - and I would sleep for an extended period and my mom would say that I would wake up fully well.
If this could be induced in infants going through trauma's such as a surgery, where inducing natural brain-flush instead of pumping a tiny body full of "medicine" this might be great for their long term mental development outside of having medicines in them when growing extremely fast.
Dreamers have no problems here :)
the trigger could be like a sequence of flashes or certain pulsing of sound frequencies, it'd be like hacking the nervous system via unsanitized inputs
Have you read Snow Crash?
Meditation?
The paper shows a correlation between the observed ‘brain waves’ and the ‘toxin removal’. From the abstract: ‘These waves are a plausible mechanism to explain the correlated potentiation of the glymphatic flow through the brain parenchyma’. I think the main objective of this paper is to justify more funding to explore this phenomenon, to establish causation (beyond correlation).