PhDwannabe

Wholeheartedly agreed. Nothing wrong with touting all of the benefits of a big ol' sugar pill--because there's a lot of them. You've just got to label the bottle correctly.

There's already a few successful predictions floating around this thread.

It's difficult to put it better, as usual, than the Skeptic's Dictionary.

Great Scott, it works! Oh yeah, and the fake stuff works pretty good too.

<shakes fist> Perceptible light in the visible spectrum! You got me, you ol' hound dog, you got me.

Wrong. The one you found did appear to be peer-reviewed, though, so we can certainly work with it. Moving on: Wrong. The article suggests that the NTS is an exception in what could be several areas capable of sustaining NREMS, because it is the only one that is in the brainstem: In fact, they even contradict your above assertion in their abstract: Anyway, let's look at your more modest claim: Doc, I'm going to say it again. We don't need to associate or suggest any sort of connection between the functionalities of sleep and anything else in terms of the neurological architecture they share. That is known. I'll re-quote what I said up there: There I was talking about the hypothalamus. It can also be said about the brainstem. We're fixated on the nucleus of the solitary tract, now, are we? Well, solitary tract nucleus pathways also help control the gag reflex. Do you think sleep could be the evolutionary relative of behaviors initially evolved to clear foreign matter from the throat? Using the paradigm of the triune brain, you're making evolutionary arguments based on what's hanging out together in the neuroanatomical neighborhood. The problems with this sort of reasoning are serious. The triune brain model you employ has similar problems, and can help explain what I mean here; it assumes a nearly-exclusive process of addition--new stuff being layered on top of old stuff--rather than a process of modification. It gets laughed at by a lot of current neurobiologists--it's a pop theory. It's really a pretty solid example of the teleological fallacies which plagued evolutionary theory for its first hundred years--it's an obsession with phylogenetic progression. "This progression is viewed as occurring in step with the ascent up the phylogenetic scale. Homoplasty, particularly parallelism and convergence, are not considered as factors in evolution. This unidimensional progression, seemingly under the direction of some imperative, is reminiscent of the now discredited 'predetermined path' theory of apparent steady lines of 'progressive' evolution" (Butler & Hodos, 2005, p. 116). Much as I'd like to bash the triune model for a while, let me get back to the meat of it, so there's no misunderstanding: I'm, as you by now know, most interested in your claim that extant sleep physiology is somehow evolved from earlier functions which dealt with food privation. I still haven't seen any evidence from an evolutionary biological perspective, which I think would be strongest. What you've presented here is some neurophysiological research which one part of sleep behavior (non-rapid eye movement sleep) shares some neurological architecture with other functions. Indeed, the quoted article did not say anything about eating, it noted "visceral activites." The one named visceral activity it seemed to be referring to was that controlled by the medullary cerebral vasodilator area, which is a region of the medulla that helps adjust cerebral blood flow. In terms of advancing upon your thesis, this finding does not really get us anywhere. References Butler, A. B., & Hodos, W. (2005) Comparative vertebrate neuroanatomy: Evolution and adaptation, 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Hugh: As you might be familiar with, your visual system is engaged in all kinds of trickery to create a smooth and usable cognitive experience of vision for you. I actually just got done commenting on another post in this same section in which I noted the old physiological psychology yarn: Retinal information is reorganized and jumbled around in so many ways, it's difficult to cover it all even in survey in a several-week unit of a physiological psychology course. I won't try to spit it all out here, just emphasize that this sort of thing is (relatively) normal now and then, and doesn't have anything to do with extra spatial dimensions--rather, it's a property of our extremely complex visual system. There are clusters of neurons up there that are almost hilariously specific. Lesions, for instance, in certain parts of the section called area V5 can knock out your sensitivity to motion, leaving you with akinotopsia, the rather unfortunate inability to see anything that's moving. Experience also seems to be needed to develop (and thus, can also sometimes interfere with as well) certain finely-grained functions. The classic examples of this are Blakemore and Cooper's very unlucky kittens, who were raised in environments consisting of entirely vertical or horizontal lines. They ended up essentially unable to perceive the opposite orientation, or track objects along the experienced orientation (here's a link to the article's citation, but you can Google plenty of fun summaries of it.) The neuropsychological devices used to fiddle with the orientation of retinal images are probably well-known to you already. I noticed that somebody on the other internet forum you posted this question on wisely brought up Stratton's upside-down eyeglasses experiments. This study instituted a line of research which described much of this neuropsychological functionality. To hit the point all over again: the shifting experiences you describe can be induced, or can happen randomly. They're part of the way the visual system works--and occasionally doesn't work optimally. It's a simple and parsimonious explanation that we don't need any extra spatial dimensions for. If it happens to you more often than others, you may have some idiopathic quirk of the visual cortex. Although this phenomenon was originally noticed in epilepsy, the brain may also be susceptible to the "kindling" of just about anything--one neurological experience tends to make it easier for another to happen--we seem to find it now with things like seizures, psychotic breaks, depressive episodes. It's a stab in the dark, but I offer that--who knows?--it could also be implicated here. Finally, although I'm not a physician--and couldn't dispense medical advice over here even if I was--I might say to use some caution here. If you are having experiences like these very often, or their frequency or intensity increases, or you experience other neurological symptoms like any kind of migraine, migraine aura, tingling, numbness, other problems with vision or other senses, tinnitus, dizziness, motor disturbances, stuff like that, it probably wouldn't hurt to see a general practitioner or a neurologist.

I see now after I've finished composing the following that swansont already said much of it in fewer words, but what the hell? Anything worth saying is worth saying again, and with as much unnecessary verbiage as possible. Your visual cortex is fully capable of creating whatever mental images or experiences it feels like, whether or not they correspond precisely to the images cast on your retina at the time. When many of the cells involved get... for lack of a lengthier explanation... "bored," they make up all sorts of things. Your visual cortex represents to the little homunculus that is "you" (er... not really) a closed-circuit television view of the world which is far less faithful of that retinal image than you often think it is. (In physiological psychology, the fun and oft-repeated phrase is that the retinal image arrives in the cortex "upside-down, full of holes, and standing still.") The phenomenological experiences of light or light patterns don't involve actual, physical light at the cortical level anymore than phenomenological experiences of pain involve getting your grey matter stuck with a pin. As noted above, the experience of a dream or hallucination can be easily thought of as an example of an image without light necessarily falling on the retina.

<whispering to self> ...dextral, yes... Yes, that clears things up significantly.

Well, I think the good old Hive Mind clears up one issue for us real quick.

Assuming your medication is neither caffeine nor alcohol, I'd imagine that, yes, it is different than coffee or scotch. Beyond the usual caveat not to take your medication against or outside of the supervision of a physician--which I gather is not relevant to you here--can I ask what pain med you're on that is non-addicting and has amphetamine-like excitatory effects?

Shouldn't there also be something in here about a gyre? I feel like there's a gyre missing.

<sigh> I'll go ahead and suggest that everybody tiptoe quietly around anything that appears almost totally unlreated, or... patently insane. Welcome to SFN.

I'm still shaking in anticipation for that recent, peer-reviewed evolutionary biological evidence which might suggest a connection between mechanisms evolved to deal with food privation and extant sleep physiology.

Yes, still can't wait to hear more about how this process (this "walking") actually works. Go on...

Since you haven't answered Azure's question about how you mean it, I'm going to assume from your definition that you were talking about, in her words, the socio-economic sort of materialism related to economic consumerism. To that end, I don't think your definition is exhaustive enough. I'm not sure an ideal materialist (again, in the socioeconomic sense) sees only material things as valuable. Look at the rise of switching church affiliations in the last several decades--I think peoples' "god-shopping" is plenty indicative of and described by what we might call materialist values. Individuals' flaunting or obsession with membership in various things could also be up there. I don't just think it's treating only physical things with value--I suspect that part of the deal may be in treating non-physical things like physical objects of value. Though, again, if we are talking only about the socioeconomic stuff, I echo Azure:

I'd dearly love to know what you mean by that one.

With a heavy sigh, I'll go one further and note that, in my unfortunate realm of the social sciences, we are limited to questions that have answers with not only observable, but operationalizable consequences. The need to define a criterion variable is a nastier problem in some quarters of science than others. Speaking to another issue, what are people's opinions on the necessity of being able to immediately and repeatably test something in the present to consider a method "scientific?" For want of a good flux capacitor, we can't perform controlled experiments on the demography of the Middle Atlantic states in the 18th century. Do you think we can nonetheless study the topic with the methods of what some historians call historical science? Phrased more closely to the original question of the thread, can I answer some or any historical questions with science? Thank the gods history was only my undergrad minor, and I thus have little emotional investment in the answers. Whew!

We're agreed--wholeheartedly. However, I can't agree with your original contention, which was a very different statement: That's a much stronger statement than "we don't have a clear, integrated theory." In fact, I might go ahead and suggest that the state of 90% of current scientific endeavor is somewhere between "without the slightest understanding" and "clear, integrated theory." Also, I don't think it's particularly arrogant to suggest that: I was trying there to note that this information is available and describe how it is available, certainly not that I currently possess all of it. Does that make sense? As part of that, I was trying to establish the ground for this question: I'm still not clear of your response to that. You continue to fixate on my personal attributes and motivations, which isn't making things any clearer. I'll save you the time and counterclaim that my self-aggrandizing nitpicking isn't getting us any closer either. Thank god that's over and done with. On a second issue: You just missed the text above the quote box up there, which I'll underline right here. I said, fully: "It might help if this: 'If the modern brain evolved from some primitive form, we should be able to find and follow the footprints of that form back to its beginning.' was expressed without the use of an unclear metaphor. Follow what footprints how?" I was challenging (and continue to challenge) you to more fully flesh out very specifically what you mean by "footprints:" what they are, how we find them, what is this thing called "following" them, and so on.

To throw down evidence which isn't highly relevant to the point, and then resist the questioning of that evidence with "you won't accept anything I'll say!" is a rhetorical tactic, and a bad one. I can't speak for the dozens of lurkers, but I'm still looking for some recent, peer-reviewed evolutionary biological literature which might at least speak to a connection between mechanisms for dealing with food privation and extant sleep physiology. I don't think that's a great deal to ask. In discussions of psychology, I don't cite many whole textbooks--because that's generally unhelpful--and I don't cite many studies from midcentury--because, with a few exceptions, I may as well be citing Aristotle. Sciences move quickly. Support your claim with some kind of recent literature: quote it, and describe how it applies. These aren't particularly novel rules that I'm making up in the middle of a game, here. I've challenged you to support a simple claim, and that is how the support is generally constructed. Do so, and we'll have something substantive to chew over. P.S.: Perhaps there is something in those Jouvet articles, etc. which might directly apply to the food-privation-mechanism-extant-sleep-physiology connection. (That'd surprise me, but I'd be pleased to eat those words.) If so, would you be able to quote a section here, or send me the articles? I'm not able to obtain them with my own academic database access. Merci!

Throw 'em down, Doc! What're you waiting for?

I think evolutionary biology does more than "give a 'long time' explanation." I think it also describes the methods by which these changes occur, the environmental pressures which drive them, and the dump trucks upon dump trucks of morphological, genetic, and paleontological evidence for their occurrence. I, uh, I think.

I was really referring to some empirical support for the claim that extant sleep physiology is in some way evolved from mechanisms meant for dealing with food privation. Neurophys research from the mid-20th century and neuropsych/neuroanatomy textbooks are probably not going to be good sources for that.

Quite right--the commonness of strange eating behavior in parasomniacal conditions (organic, or induced) is yet another example. I'd go beyond the word "suggest," however. The mechanism of the connection is reasonably well-understood: behaviors like eating and sleeping, as well as other processes which regulate basal metabolism, all share quite a bit of architecture up there--for eating and sleeping, particularly in the hypothalamic neighborhood. It's difficult to disturb a massive neuroendocrine transshipment center like the hypothalamus--either with a physical lesion or chemical abnormality--without knocking more than one thing off the shelf. This extant overlap of function, however--talking to DrmDoc here, not Marat--doesn't in itself necessarily inform us in specific ways about the evolutionary history of either the region or the functions.

Let's go ahead and, being civil, keep that out of a discussion of data and scientific hypothesis and theory. Up for contention are: data, hypothesis, theory, logical reasoning, and clarity of expression. Musing about the values, motives, or personalities of the person on the other side of the screen is best left to one's private angry muttering. Lord knows I do a fair amount of it. Onward, then, honorable combatant! If that was the point, it was unclear to me. Including the word "primary" in the original would have made it clearer. At any rate, if that is the point: do we have any reason to believe that this is sound evolutionary-biological reasoning: 1) The mechanism x exists in our physiology, which allows us to engage in/primarily regulates behavior y. 2) That mechanism x is a remnant/version of some mechanism x' which first existed in some ancestor. 3) The ancestor which saw the initial development of mechanism x' must have also been engaging in behavior y. 4) Behavior y must have been this ancestor's "primary behavior." I don't think either 3) or 4) are anywhere near sound. I'll leave the reader to develop their own analogies about, say, hands and flippers and fins and whatnot. OK, so here's something. First off, I'm not sure if we could really call these processes "vestiges," since they have clear extant function. The claim here is pretty general--that we sleep because (I think it is more right to say that we can sleep because) ancestors evolved processes... here's where it gets a little stranger... "to sustain the viability of vital systems... through periods of rest and food privation." Two endings there. The first one is somewhat tautological: We can sleep because ancestors evolved processes to sustain systems through periods of rest. What? The second one is the part of your claim that seems to be the most novel: it's a proposed connection between mechanisms responsible for maintaining life through food privation and modern sleep behavior--namely, that the latter has evolved in some way from the former, if I have it right. That's a claim--a scientific claim. It's not insane or stupid or unamenable to the processes of science by any means. One we can work with. I've questioned your chain of logic as regards that claim. I haven't yet seen a parry to that particular attack. Better yet would be the provision of some sort of evidence--evolutionary biological, paleontological, anthropological, for this claim or its ancillaries.