Talk:Sleep and learning

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I wouldn't say that the theory of REM as a way to refresh the brain after NREM has no support in the scientific community. There's a recent article in Nature that supports this theory...

I removed an external link to www.modafinil.com, which is not relevant and does not mention learning at all. It's a site about the drug Modafinil.

There is currently another external link to an article in Nature magazine. It's probably on topic, but it is not available to most viewers. You can see it only if you are a subscriber to Nature. Should this link be included? What is Wikipedia's policy?


Carax

Response to Anonymous (see below):

  1. "defragmentation language" predominates current sleep research - after all most of new findings come from understanding neural networks (suggested author reading: Buzsaki)
  2. removing the adjective "creative" deprives the statment on damage done by sleep deprivation from the hint that it is creativity that suffers most. Optimizing the structure/layout of memories is ineeded called by Evans "garbage collection". This is why we wake up on new ideas (authors: Bruce McNaughton, Seynowski, Francis Crick, Buzsaki, Robert Stickgold, Carlyle Smith)
  3. the "didactic tone": this is exactly what Robert Stickgold dedicated his life to: educating public about the ravages of sleep deprivation. This is a serious social problem! <no grin>

Short popular scientific article on sleep and learning from Nature journal: http://www.nature.com/nsu/010426/010426-15.html


Piotr Wozniak

Anonymous wrote: Original article sounds a little cultish to me. After a un-didacticism redaction it now sounds like a system user manual for hard drive defragmentation <grin>

To FretPorpTine: I understand that you strive for understandability, but on the way you have lost the quintessence of healthy sleep: appropriate NREM:REM structure. Someone needs to stress that a refreshing deep NREM pill-induced sleep has nothing to do with healthy sleep. The NREM:REM pair would either have to be resored or a new entry healthy sleep be created. However, sleep and learning seems more specialist and it is here where technicalities should go, esp. that healthy sleep and sleep good for learning are one and the same things. Someone neutral please take over -- Piotr Wozniak

Consider moving the sleep and learning page to whatever the scientific name is for the theory it advances. Frankly, it's shameful that it wasn't put on such a page in the first place--I mean, what's the point of writing about the theory if you don't so much as give it a name or identify its proponents? Sorry, I'm being harsh again. :-) --LMS

  1. I see no harshness in your words
  2. Role of sleep in learning is as much a "theory" as the role of water in survival. The main difference is that most people do not realize the damage done by sleep deprivation. There are a number of theories on how memories are laid down in sleep: "two-stage memory formation", "complementary encoding", "activation-synthesis", etc. But these refer to details of the process, not to the memory-sleep link. If I knew a better name, I would certainly use it. To understand my dilemma, suggest under which name should we place water-survival "theory"? OK. That's not a good example. "Hypothalamic thirst center" you will exclaim. But I bet you will have a hard time to find such a placeholder for sleep and learning. SCN? raphe? RAS? All that comes to my mind is sleep on one hand, and learning and memory on the other. Hence the attachment to "my page" of "learning theories" -- Piotr Wozniak

The article boldly claims that the main purpose of sleep is "to consolidate and optimize the layout of memories." I want hard evidence that sleep researchers are well agreed that this is the main purpose of sleep, and then I'll shut up. Otherwise, I am forced to conclude that the article is not written from the neutral point of view. Last I heard, it was not agreed upon, just what the purpose of sleep is. If you can't work on article from the neutral point of view, then please don't work on it at all. --LMS

I rest my case. My belief is that societies could TRIPLE their output in creative domains with a better understanding of sleep physiology. That is my main purpose in promoting the understanding of sleep. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not the right medium for that. After several reedits, link placements and pleas, every reasonable person needs to give up at some point (value/time). All I will do here is:

  1. refer those interested in the subject to my own uneditable (God bless!) article: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm
  2. respond to Larry Sanger via an uneditable FAQ here: http://www.supermemo.com/help/faq/sleep.htm#6062-3471
  3. leave a not-so-optimistic note on the future role of present-shape Wikipedia as encyclopedia at Piotr Wozniak -- Piotr Wozniak

Piotr, I am more than willing to defer to authority, including yours. If you would take a moment and stop being defensive, you might notice that Wikipedia allows you to edit the article, and, had you simply put what you put in your FAQ, in answer to my question, most of my complaints would be removed. How hard or frustrating is it to do that? We arrive at consensus here, and almost always defer to authority; I imagine the only authorities to which we don't generally defer are the ones that are very obviously biased, and that isn't obvious in your case, not to me. --LMS

  • My hope is that someone will do this reediting without a bias. My corrections could spark a new cycle of reedits. In addition, I would never notice that "generalization" or "minimization" or "interference" could cause misunderstandings but ... perhaps this is because I come from a computing background where these are cripsly defined? I am aware I use an idiosyncratic language -- Piotr Wozniak

I am entering this discussion for the first time - what I now call "The Circadian Theory of Learning" was published in 1969 by the University of Chicago Press and has been scanned and placed online by Duke University neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro - to access the theory, enter "Classic Papers in Sleep and Learning" in google - I have almost 40 years of clippings and correspondence about this theory and will gladly participate in Wikipedia, but I don't yet know the basics of posting/editing/etc David Bryson, MD (Yale '63)

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