Why doesn't your brain sleep?

So everybody sleeps. To recharge. But you still dream. Your brain remains active. Why the need for this auto pilot? Is it to ensure you bodily functions remain in order? It is odd that our dreams are a screen saver, how can you rest your mind truly?

a reply to: Briles1207

Ok so I don't dream anymore....a cause of looking too much at the sun.

Always on can be a little much....the auto Pilot dummy is for your own protection in case of a serious emergency......lol. If you force yourself the off switch is built in. I advise not playing it.

A total reset involves changing your core mentality, the one above subconcious.

This takes work and in building a new framework that works in time, and understanding yourself.

Cheers

I think the brain has to be constantly active in order for us to be alive. If our brain were to be shut down completely while we sleep, we might never wake up.
Here is an interesting link on sleeping and dreaming that may answer your question.
www.ninds.nih.gov...

a reply to: Briles1207

Why doesn't your brain sleep?

Because the brains recieves, transmits information much the same way computer servers are online 24/7, or you lose that ability to tap into the collective consciousness (that you are a part of) from the 3rd dimensional perspective.

The feeling of begin stuck, lost or helplessness, usually can be result of creating the illusion of disconnection from the source.

Peace

a reply to: Briles1207

Our brains are the conductor of our highly sophisticated and technical body. Just as an orchestra needs its director, our bodies need our brains telling which parts of our system to function in what is almost a musical symphony of the electrical. All of this happening while our conscious mindbody slumber.

there's no disconnect between you and your brain.

i can ask why doesnt my brain take a vacation or feels sad.

in other words, its is all one big seamless phenomena, sleep to you is not sleep to the brain. its just another function it performs.

thinking about this today,if the brain dies then obiviously everything you know dies so if our world gets wiped out then everything ends cause everything only exists cause of us and what we know(doesn,t it) no it doesn,t cause the universe is still there its just no longer here cause no one is here to know its still there.

or are they? its a total mind f**k if you actually sit down and think too hard about it like me lol

Personally, I don't feel as if I got a good rest without dreaming. That's not always the case though as I sometimes wake up refreshed and may not remember my dreams, but the best sleep I ever get is through dreaming. I feel like I can tap into emotions and work things out in my dream worlds.
Like odzeandennz points out, there is no disconnect between you and your brain. When your body is at rest, it also keeps performing duties to keep you alive. My heart keeps beating and doesn't need a break or rest from its function or I would cease to be alive. Sleep is the state of resting your entire body and your brain just keeps functioning and dreams are a part of the functioning.

originally posted by: Briles1207

It is odd that our dreams are a screen saver, how can you rest your mind truly?

You do. During deep sleep, you aren't aware at all. REM sleep, where you dream, is a relatively small percentage of time.

It may seem like you are dreaming the entire time you're asleep, but that's because you're offline and not recording the passage of time when you're in deep sleep.

Moreover, the dreaming part is essential, too. Think of it as a sort of defrag and disk analysis period.

eta: you dream a lot while you're awake, too, and I don't mean daydreams. Most people, me definitely included, have split seconds of what is known as 'microsleep' while you're awake and doing something else. During a microsleep, you almost always dream, and then immediately forget it. I've gotten where I can spot myself doing it now, before that I was aware I had periods where I had just been thinking of something I couldn't quite recall.

Hi Bedlam,

How did you catch those periods and identify them?

Thanks,
Gwynn

a reply to: Bedlam

a reply to: Briles1207

Our brains, unlike the rest of our body tissues, have no lymphatic vessels, which would normally assist in the excretion of wastes.

Neurotransmitters, once they have completed their 'processing' tasks, need to be washed from the nervous system and flushed out of the cerbro-spinal fluid (CSF).

Due to the open structure of the brain, the CSF (a type of lymphatic fluid) flushes through and ports it out to the lymphatic system. This ONLY occurs during sleep. If sleep is prevented, the toxins can accumulate to dangerous levels.

Although parts of our sleep are high activity dream states (like REM dreaming), others are quite inactive.

Sleep is not a simple single state.

a reply to: Briles1207

I very seldom dream. Somebody told me it's because I'm not getting any REM sleep. Which is probably the case because I'm always tossing and turning in the night. I can't sleep all night. I usually wake up around 3 O'clock a.m. and watch T.V. for an hour and a half and than go back to bed. You would think as you get older you would sleep better, but I guess that's not necessarily the case. However, my best ideas come before I fall asleep.

a reply to: WeRpeons

As the body gets older it reduces the amount of melatonin it produces - and melatonin is what "puts" us to sleep (and keeps us there). Easily supplemented, and sleeping like a baby (or at least a 30 year old) is regained anew. When started it may give you vivid dreams for a couple/few nights, and then it normalizes. Melatonin is depleted when your eyes are exposed to light, so having a light on in your vicinity at night, or even using a light to go to the bathroom, will reduce the melatonin (the body thinks the sun is coming up). None of this comes from any medical knowledge on my part, I am neither a doctor or play one on the internet, just data I've come across that I believe to be true or mostly true.

Here's a thread from 2012, I'll give it a good read again (can't recall if I've read or posted on it) at some point soon: www.abovetopsecret.com...

It's probably for the same reason most of our other organs don't "go to sleep" when our consciousness goes to sleep. If our lungs, hearts, intestines or nervous system "went to sleep", we'd die.

I guess the real question would be "why do our minds need to go to sleep? Because our bodies continue to work even as we sleep.

a reply to: chr0naut

Our brains, unlike the rest of our body tissues, have no lymphatic vessels

Not true. They were just so hard to find that they evaded anamotical investigation for hundreds of years.

In searching for T-cell gateways into and out of the meninges, we discovered functional lymphatic vessels lining the dural sinuses. These structures express all of the molecular hallmarks of lymphatic endothelial cells, are able to carry both fluid and immune cells from the cerebrospinal fluid, and are connected to the deep cervical lymph nodes. The unique location of these vessels may have impeded their discovery to date, thereby contributing to the long-held concept of the absence of lymphatic vasculature in the central nervous system.

I'm afraid the theory you put forward was a speculative way to explain dreaming. It's most probably false.

a reply to: Briles1207

While you sleep, your consciousness moves to your other body, the one you own in the other universe. Your other body sleeps while this one is awake, and vice versa.

While conscious, you actually experience a 'day' that is (roughly) 32 hours long — sixteen hours in each body. However, interdimensional compression phenomena ensure that each sixteen-hour waking period corresponds to an eight-hour sleep period in the other body.

You don't actually dream; you just recall distorted fragments of your waking experience in your alternate body.

You can die, if you "want to rest your mind truly".

The body is a massive biochemical process. Just think of this: every second, 1 quadrillion molecules of adenosine triphosphate - the energy currency of all biological organisms - are processed by your body's 50 trillion cells.

So why doesn't your mind rest? It is at rest. When you sleep, what is happening is in a sense not all your concern: you're hardly conscious to it.

So why make an issue where there isn't one?

As for dreaming itself; it's clearly there to resolve, or at least digest, the various emotional spikes that were experienced during the day, or which have held a particular force in your personal life. Dreaming is a type of "metabolization" of emotional content by the brain. It's there for our homeostasis; it helps us by de-potentiating the neural circuits that otherwise disturb our consciousness.

Everything about this 'world' is strange.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: chr0naut

Our brains, unlike the rest of our body tissues, have no lymphatic vessels

Not true. They were just so hard to find that they evaded anamotical investigation for hundreds of years.

In searching for T-cell gateways into and out of the meninges, we discovered functional lymphatic vessels lining the dural sinuses. These structures express all of the molecular hallmarks of lymphatic endothelial cells, are able to carry both fluid and immune cells from the cerebrospinal fluid, and are connected to the deep cervical lymph nodes. The unique location of these vessels may have impeded their discovery to date, thereby contributing to the long-held concept of the absence of lymphatic vasculature in the central nervous system.

I'm afraid the theory you put forward was a speculative way to explain dreaming. It's most probably false.

Except for sinus saggitalis inferior and sinus rectus (Neither of which penetrate fully enough to qualify for waste removal from the the majority of brain matter), the dural sinuses are external to the brain (although it could be argued that the internal cavities in the brain are not external to the grey matter). The meninges are tissues that surround the brain.

The lymphatic gateways through the dura are required to flush waste laden CSF from the brain. In my post I did not go into the specifics of "porting" the wastes out of the brain into the lymph. The dural lymphatic vessels are those ports.

So, depending upon how you wish to define things, either I am right or you are. I still hold to my previous post being correct until better science convinces me otherwise.

The flushing of waste laden CSF has no direct connection with, and is not explanatory of, dreaming (that I know of). It is just that both processes occur in the brain during sleep.

My final point is that sleep itself is a complex and multifaceted process, not a simple single state as might be inferred from the OP.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: Briles1207

While you sleep, your consciousness moves to your other body, the one you own in the other universe. Your other body sleeps while this one is awake, and vice versa.

While conscious, you actually experience a 'day' that is (roughly) 32 hours long — sixteen hours in each body. However, interdimensional compression phenomena ensure that each sixteen-hour waking period corresponds to an eight-hour sleep period in the other body.

You don't actually dream; you just recall distorted fragments of your waking experience in your alternate body.

Citation for this (sorry just had to)?