No more sleep, through neuroscience Options

[Hudzon]

Here's an idea that I've got, and don't mind my wording being off as it's being posted after another all nighter.

We don't know why we need to sleep, but we generally agree that it's because of something that is going on within the brain when we do, and not going on within the brain when we don't.

So, what if we force these processes to occur while we're awake, for example by electronically stimulate the areas of the brain that are more active during sleep?

Would that produce any affect at all?

[astroidea]

I just read an interesting theory journal about the restoratative homeostatic processes of sleep for my neuropharmacology class.

The main theory of it has to do with the regulation of synaptic connections between neurons(synaptic potentiation and neuroplasticity). Basically what happens when you're awake is that you interact with the environment, receiving a plethora of stimuli. This stimuli results in new synaptic connections that allows you to retain experiences and learn. By the time you're done with the day, your brain's synaptic density has increased by 40%. These extra synaptic connections take up a lot of energy and space to upkeep, hence it makes you tired.

When you sleep, these synaptic connections are pruned off, except a weak trace of them, and to essentially clean the slate so you can repotentiate your synapses the next day.

So why can't you just prune these connections off when you're awake? Well if you've learned about brain waves and arousal, we have various brain wave frequencies throughout the day that affects our arousal. When you're asleep, you have the slowest frequency waves, known as alpha waves. When you're tired, you have beta waves, all the way up to theta waves when it's 1hr before your exam and you barely got half of your studying done.

Your ability to potentiate or depotentiate synapses depend on these brain waves. Research shows that depotentiation of synapses is directly correlated with the strength of slow wave activity in the brain, and the strength of slow wave activity is also directly correlated with the synaptic density in the brain.

So basically, your brain needs to be in a state of slow activity in order to produce restoration. Furthermore, when your brain is pruning its synapses, it doesn't make sense to do it when you're awake and trying to interact with your environment - you wouldn't be able to learn or remember anything anyways!