horizontallytall
"Every cope has an end ":psalm 14:3
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2023
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Think of it this way - on your computer, you run a game. You save your game - that's memory - and then you shut down the game program. It's done. It's not running.
The computer is still on. You leave it for a while. Maybe to go to bed.
While you are away, the OS takes care of housekeeping. Maybe it scans for malware, maybe it does a backup to a storage drive, maybe it cleans up files. It's ticking over.
You come back, and boot up your game. It loads and runs the game, it loads the save state from the last time you played. Now you are playing the game again.
This is what happens to you, every time you sleep at night.
When you fall asleep, the neurons that generate the 'game' that is 'you' stop talking to each other. They literally disconnect and widen the space between them. No signals go through. 'You' are not running at all. You are gone. Completely.
Specialized cells, called astrocytes, begin attending your neurons. They clean them, soothe them with chemistry, and help in their repair and maintenance. Meanwhile, the gentle pressure of your blood through your veins and arteries slowly pushes and pumps the lymph around, as well as the cerebrospinal fluid that fills the spaces between your neurons.
The waste products - the 'poop' from your neurons is flushed away by the gentle motion of the fluid, which drains waste products into the lymphatic fluid, and then out of your brain. Your brain is literally 'flushing the toilet' from all the waste that has built up during your waking hours.
It does it this way because normally, when your brain is manufacturing your sense of self, your identity and self-awareness, your neurons are very close to each other, tightly packed, and well connected with each other. It is only in deep sleep that they can pull apart far enough to allow fluid to move through and between them, so that the waste can be removed.
This is why you need to sleep - one reason among many, including memory consolidation and other functions. If you don't sleep, the waste builds up and poisons your brain.
This 'offline' is not constant during sleep. Occasionally, the neurons draw back together and partially or completely reconnect. This is when dreaming occurs - you are brought partially 'online' again, enough to have a scrambled awareness made of confusing and strange imagery. Then the neurons pull apart again for more flushing and being attended to.
This cycle repeats throughout the night, with more dreaming cycles closer to the time you wake up. In the early part of your sleep, you are absent - not running, turned off completely - for very long periods of time. Hours. Then, gradually, the neurons pull together enough for signals to go through, and you begin the on-again-off-again dreaming portion of sleep.
But make no mistake - when your neurons are apart, there are no signals going through them to generate your self or identity. You literally don't exist. You are exactly like the game program you shut down on the computer. The computer ticks over, doing maintenance, but the game program isn't running. In the same way, you cease to exist while you are 'switched off' so that your neurons can 'flush the toilet'.
If the game isn't running, is it still a 'game'? Is it still a 'game' when it is just a mass of static bytes of data sitting on a hard drive, unread, waiting to run?
How you answer that question will decide how you define whether or not you think you exist during the non-dreaming parts of sleep.
The computer is still on. You leave it for a while. Maybe to go to bed.
While you are away, the OS takes care of housekeeping. Maybe it scans for malware, maybe it does a backup to a storage drive, maybe it cleans up files. It's ticking over.
You come back, and boot up your game. It loads and runs the game, it loads the save state from the last time you played. Now you are playing the game again.
This is what happens to you, every time you sleep at night.
When you fall asleep, the neurons that generate the 'game' that is 'you' stop talking to each other. They literally disconnect and widen the space between them. No signals go through. 'You' are not running at all. You are gone. Completely.
Specialized cells, called astrocytes, begin attending your neurons. They clean them, soothe them with chemistry, and help in their repair and maintenance. Meanwhile, the gentle pressure of your blood through your veins and arteries slowly pushes and pumps the lymph around, as well as the cerebrospinal fluid that fills the spaces between your neurons.
The waste products - the 'poop' from your neurons is flushed away by the gentle motion of the fluid, which drains waste products into the lymphatic fluid, and then out of your brain. Your brain is literally 'flushing the toilet' from all the waste that has built up during your waking hours.
It does it this way because normally, when your brain is manufacturing your sense of self, your identity and self-awareness, your neurons are very close to each other, tightly packed, and well connected with each other. It is only in deep sleep that they can pull apart far enough to allow fluid to move through and between them, so that the waste can be removed.
This is why you need to sleep - one reason among many, including memory consolidation and other functions. If you don't sleep, the waste builds up and poisons your brain.
This 'offline' is not constant during sleep. Occasionally, the neurons draw back together and partially or completely reconnect. This is when dreaming occurs - you are brought partially 'online' again, enough to have a scrambled awareness made of confusing and strange imagery. Then the neurons pull apart again for more flushing and being attended to.
This cycle repeats throughout the night, with more dreaming cycles closer to the time you wake up. In the early part of your sleep, you are absent - not running, turned off completely - for very long periods of time. Hours. Then, gradually, the neurons pull together enough for signals to go through, and you begin the on-again-off-again dreaming portion of sleep.
But make no mistake - when your neurons are apart, there are no signals going through them to generate your self or identity. You literally don't exist. You are exactly like the game program you shut down on the computer. The computer ticks over, doing maintenance, but the game program isn't running. In the same way, you cease to exist while you are 'switched off' so that your neurons can 'flush the toilet'.
If the game isn't running, is it still a 'game'? Is it still a 'game' when it is just a mass of static bytes of data sitting on a hard drive, unread, waiting to run?
How you answer that question will decide how you define whether or not you think you exist during the non-dreaming parts of sleep.
