Sleep length and brain health

**AlternateReality** · 03-27-2015 04:37 PM

So I stumbled upon this video on Netflix:

Jeff Iliff: One more reason to get a good night

Now it's all very interesting, but it boils down to pretty much common sense - if we don't sleep enough our brains stop working.
We know that to get "a good night's sleep" you need to devote a lot of time, many REM cycles, to finish this process.
But it is also possible to take naps at certain times and wake up refreshed, even though you were only asleep for a fraction of the regular time.
There are certain societies which even devote time for mass napping or relaxing.

Why does the brain need so much time to clean at night, when it is capable of cleaning in a short nap?
I'm not sure how accepted the advanced napping concepts are anymore (uberman/polyphasic), the type where you only take naps throughout the day... but is it essentially hacking your brain, sort of like teaching a dog, and forcing it to only conduct quick cleaning cycles?

Sleep is the biggest use of every person's time on earth. What if we could all live on a nap cycle, or even develop a way to force our brain to clean, and do it faster?
Anybody have any thoughts?

**Dthoughts** · 03-27-2015 04:47 PM

I can only say that I share ur sentiments. I've seen the ted talk and that's exactly what I thought. Naps. Yes. That should work.

**Zoth** · 03-28-2015 06:43 PM

But it is also possible to take naps at certain times and wake up refreshed, even though you were only asleep for a fraction of the regular time.

Feeling refreshed doesn't mean you're not sleep deprived. Basically, naps can give you an extra help fighting the symptons of sleep deprivation, but research also shows that it might simply be impossible to gain back the hours of sleep you lost. Besides, the effects on cognition are much, much harder to notice/test, especially because subjective reports are especially flawed.

I'm not sure how accepted the advanced napping concepts are anymore (uberman/polyphasic), the type where you only take naps throughout the day... but is it essentially hacking your brain, sort of like teaching a dog, and forcing it to only conduct quick cleaning cycles?

Their problem is not the nap system, it's more the fact that they are designed (at least uberman) to reduce the amount of sleep you experience. By this logic alone, one can already infer that sleep deprivation occurs. Now, whether people feel (like so many reports do) tired or great/refreshed has almost nothing to do with the cognitive/physiological deficits they incur derived from these kind of practices.
Leaving uberman aside, a nap-only sleep pattern wouldn't probably be as efficient as our current model I would think, because you would be dis-regulating your circadian clock.