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Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Polyphasic Sleep Seed Study: Reprise - Less Wrong Discussion

40 Post author: BrienneYudkowsky 21 September 2013 10:29PM

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Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 22 September 2013 08:41:19PM 1 point [-]

I wondered why Burning Man should disrupt polyphasic sleep except possibly by intoxication. But what I get from your earlier post and www.polyphasicsociety.com is that polyphasic has the following disadvantages:

  • requires strict sleeping patterns
  • requires discipline to keep the pattern
  • limited task and schedule flexibility

Obviously you need a job and a family and friends where this is no problem. I have thought about trying DC1 which is the only option that might work with four children.

I wonder what the consequences of falling out of polyphasic may be. From my own sleep deprivation 'experiments' I'd guess:

  • Involuntarily sleeping much longer than planned out of order, thus completely wrecking you schedule.
  • Being tired and drowsy for a time thus being unusually unproductive and potentially unreliable.

From your graph I'd guess that falling out of polyphasic (accidentally or not) takes a week to recover. If such accidents happen too often (and once a month may be enough) all the disturbances this causes (missed deadlines, bad quality) may quickly eat up all the nominal efficiency gains from more awake hours.

This all assumes that the saved sleep has no other positive benefits. There might be:

  • physical regeneration
  • subconscious learning (there are some posts on LW about the habit to reflect the lessons of the day before sleep)

With these considerations in mind I decided to stay with my sleep rhythm (0:00 to 6:30). I don't want to risk long time health effects ('the candle that burns brighter burns half as long').

The main thing I took out of this are the recommendations about night lighting: http://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/adaptation/night-lighting/

Comment author: Nevin 22 September 2013 11:05:05PM *  3 points [-]

The graph is a little misleading on how long it takes to recover, I'd say, since the falling out part was due to being quite sick. There is also an important additional note, which is that on E3 so far, I'm getting way less REM than I used to get with normal sleep (see plot of my baseline data below). As I eventually concluded with Uberman, it really seems like the standard E3 schedule has no possible way of giving me the amount of REM that I used to get (over two hours per night on nights when I would sleep 8-8.5 hours and feel well rested), so I'm going to test a diet that will take 5.5 hours rather than 4, but will have a legitimate chance of matching my baseline numbers for REM and SWS (slow wave sleep). This would beat my normal sleep time goal of 8 hours by 2.5 hours a day, but would include lots of naps, so it's yet to be seen if it is worth it. It will come down to whether I turn out to be able to take advantage of several 30-60 minute waking periods that are part of the rotation I'm going to try.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 24 September 2013 05:57:24AM 0 points [-]

for

subconscious learning (there are some posts on LW about the habit to reflect the lessons of the day before sleep) I just stumbled over this study:

Memory reactivation and consolidation during sleep, 2004 by Ken A. Paller1 and Joel L. Voss

http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/11/6/664.abstract

which argues:

We propose that declarative memories change both during waking and during sleep, and that such change contributes to enhancing binding of the distinct representational components of some memories, and thus to a gradual process of cross-cortical consolidation. As a result of this special form of consolidation, declarative memories can become more cohesive and also more thoroughly integrated with other stored information. Further benefits of this memory reprocessing can include developing complex networks of interrelated memories, aligning memories with long-term strategies and goals, and generating insights based on novel combinations of memory fragments.

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