<story><title>Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time</title><url>http://news.stanford.edu/2016/12/01/portions-brain-fall-asleep-wake-back-time-stanford-researchers-find/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nxc18</author><text>Taking some time to reflect on and consider my own thinking behavior has been interesting. Just like exploring any other system, subjecting myself to sleep stress (in order to meet aggressive deadlines) has allowed me to see what happens when certain things fail, revealing functional boundaries.&lt;p&gt;I see it as kind of analogous to when you starve a circuit&amp;#x2F;device of power - it behaves in unexpected ways, revealing implementation details.&lt;p&gt;Some examples that I remember: after a particularly long all nighter (I was a freshman in college and wanted to try it while I could still do it by choice and not necessity) I was editing an article I was writing for the school magazine. I was starting to fade and realized that I couldn&amp;#x27;t read and comprehend well-formed, meaningful sentences that I had just written.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve noticed that when sleep deprived I notice different things and have a more diverse set of emergent thoughts&amp;#x2F;recall events. For example, today I noticed the plug for an electric oven at a restaurant I have not only been to at least 100 times, but have worked at for months. I randomly remembered the lyrics to China&amp;#x27;s five-year-plan song walking home from class. I will suddenly remember and think fragments in Spanish, despite not touching it for years.&lt;p&gt;Truly, it appears the nature of effective cognition is &lt;i&gt;restricting&lt;/i&gt; all of the many responses to stimuli to those that are useful and relevant, and I think the parts of the brain that do that may have &amp;#x27;fallen asleep&amp;#x27; in all those instances.</text></comment>
<story><title>Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time</title><url>http://news.stanford.edu/2016/12/01/portions-brain-fall-asleep-wake-back-time-stanford-researchers-find/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>j1vms</author><text>I think we are getting closer to furthering the concept that dreaming isn&amp;#x27;t just a side-effect of thinking (or simply a defrag&amp;#x2F;clean-up routine upon the previous day&amp;#x27;s thoughts or the mind&amp;#x27;s expectations for tomorrow).  It &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; itself the key to the thinking process, and sits above and commands the other &amp;quot;agents&amp;quot;.  It helps us deal with uncertainty and lack of rationality inherent in the universe and our incomplete understanding of it.</text></comment>