Cobbers on the Brain

Figure 1: A general picture of lucid dreaming.

Sleep and memory

All through grade school and college, I always heard people say that staying up late cramming before an exam is really counterproductive and shouldn’t be done. I never believed it because I figured the more information I could go over for the exam the better. However, after reading this weeks paper on sleep and memory, it might be time to switch things up.

The paper really focused on the circadian oscillations of cAMP, Ras, MEK, CREB, and MAPK as part of the same signaling pathway. These elements as part of this pathway seem to be downregulated during the day, but are upregulated during REM sleep which is known to have activity in the hippocampus during it. The hippocampus is also known to be a site of memory consolidation, hence the signaling pathway and memory are coupled. For more information on this topic, please see the paper found here. REM sleep is also known to be when people are dreaming. This is where the idea of lucid dreaming comes from.

Figure 2: A personal account of how to lucid dream in a few easy steps.

What is lucid dreaming and how do you do it?

Lucid dreaming is simply a dream where the dreamer knows they are dreaming. Some people use this realization to actually take control of their dreams and determine their outcome. This can be very helpful for people preparing for something like a stressful meeting or public speaking as they can act out these situations in their dream to build up confidence to do it in the real world. It also just offers a fun skill for those who have ever wanted to control their dreams. But how is it done? Well, its not exactly down to a science, but there are a collection of things that one can do to have a better chance at lucid dreaming (coming from people that self report being able to lucid dream). Below is that list of those things which can be found here. Please note that I took some liberties in the names of the steps as well as some of the descriptions.

1. Preparing your bedroom
   • Do things to induce good sleeping habits. You want to induce REM sleep so do things to get good quality of sleep. Things like blackout curtains and white noise machines to block out ambient light and noise. Try calming techniques before going to bed so you are in a comfortable state first.
2. Starting or keeping a dream journal
   • This keeps you in tune with your dreams and prevents you from just having dreams and then forgetting.
3. Recognize dream themes
   • Don’t just write down dreams then forget about them. Review the journal and look for themes. Do certain people or event come up regularly? Try to recognize this in the dream.
4. Perform reality checks
   • This is a way to recognize if you are in a dream or not. These can be things like trying to push your index finger through the opposite palm with the expectation that it will happen. In a dream you will be able to make it happen! Or you could try looking at your hands and feet, in a dream they tend to be distorted. Finally you can try looking at a clock or book, then quickly looking away, and then looking back. In a dream the time or text will have likely changed but in reality it obviously doesn’t.
5. Trick your brain as you fall asleep
   • As you drift off to sleep, try repeating a phrase like “I will be aware that I am dreaming.” By repeating this you are essentially tricking your brain to remain aware as you fall asleep.
6. Try going back to sleep
   • After waking up from a dream, try to fall back asleep while thinking about was happening in the dream, but this time focus on knowing that you were aware it was a dream as you fall back asleep.
7. Induce sleep paralysis
   • Instead of #6, you can try this alternative method known as “wake induced lucid dreaming.” When your alarm goes off, try to get back to sleep as soon as possible, but keep your mind focused and active to increase the chances of lucid dreaming. However, be warned, my keeping your mind awake while your body falls back to sleep you may induce sleep paralysis which can be very frightening because you are unable to move.
8. Wake, Bake, Back to bed
   • This involves setting an alarm at some point through the night (typically 4, 5, 6, or 7 hours into sleeping with 6-7 hours to be most effective for most). This increases the chance of waking up during REM sleep and remembering your dream. Then stay awake for 30-60 minutes before going back to bed. The idea is to wake up your brain while your body is still tired.
9. Take up gaming
   • There are actually studies that show that playing video games leads to better dream memory retention as well as the ability to lucid dream. This follows because video games are typically an immersive experience that you are in control of.
10. Try to stay in the dream
    • Congratulations! Hopefully by this point you are beginning to lucid dream. However, don’t get frustrated if you can’t do it for very long. It is common for those that are first learning to lucid dream to get so excited when they finally do it that they wake themselves up.

And there you have it! How to lucid dream! The length of the post is a little long, but hopefully you’ll be lucid dreaming in no time with a little practice!

And finally, here is my arstract on how lucid dreaming can make your dreams awesome!

Being wrong is… actually, perfectly okay 

Neurochemistry this semester has given me the not-so-fun, but very much needed opportunity to practice being okay with being wrong. Not going to lie, sitting in on the first exam humbled me. A lot. Maybe I was alone with this, but I felt more clueless than ever. Not confused, not surprised, not scared, simply just clueless. I knew I wasn’t supposed to know everything, given that we only received some small snippets of information from an academic paper along with factual data in the form of a list. But I had no idea “how wrong” I could be without appearing very dumb. But eventually, I realized that instead of wondering about which level of wrongness I should achieve, I could just take whatever I was given, carefully read it, and take whatever I DID understand to use it in my hypothesis. Even if I would have been wrong, if it was logical, that would have been a win for me. Leaving the exam, I could finally fill in the cracks, and get a better understanding of what exactly I was right or wrong about, then get the chance to correct myself along with explaining my own thought process. Admitting that we can be wrong at times is hard for everyone, but this class was a great way to practice that, and gain valuable social skills while communicating our own ideas to those who may have completely different ways of thinking. I am glad to have had the opportunity to practice being wrong, which I fully believe is a part of our social awareness, as well as being responsibly engaged in the world.

Engaged citizen

The blogposts of this semester have been an amazing way to learn how to effectively communicate science to those not in science. I enjoyed the way I got more and more comfortable writing my blogs as the semester progressed, and got to have some fun researching many interesting things going on around the world. With being allowed to expand on things I personally find the most enjoyable, and letting me pursue my interests I feel I could contribute to our weekly one-on-one chatting very effortlessly. I also enjoyed getting the chance to be a leader in group discussions and building some great skills to guide, and socialize with people in a respectful and inclusive way. Bringing a group together and offering a place where people can comfortably share their thoughts is never an easy task, but certainly can be a very rewarding one.

Future directions

It really is quite interesting how many different social skills I have gained from such a “sciency” class, but I believe it will be one of most valuable experiences at Concordia. In sending me off into the world, this class has ensured me that I would be okay, even when finding myself in the most unexpected situations where I might just simply be clueless. I am way more comfortable with myself, my knowledge, and the way I present myself while communicating with others. I truly believe this course will be part of the many ways I can potentially succeed in my future career.

What’s something that we all have in common, well we sleep. I’ll admit it, some of us get more than others, but at the end of the day our favorite activity is more than willing to greet us with open arms when we’ve had enough. We already know that sleep is crucial for memory formation, specifically long term memory consolidation. Since we already know that we might ask the question, “what happens if we don’t sleep?”

Before we jump into that, lets briefly discuss what we already know. The Calcium/cAMP/MAPK/CRE pathway is necessary for memory consolidation.  The MAPK pathway is especially important in the hippocampus where long term memory is formed. REM seems to increase the activity of the pathway listed above.

Now lets look at what happens when we don’t sleep, or more specifically when we are sleep deprived. We can’t really look at what happens when we don’t sleep at all because we would die without sleeping eventually.

1. You get sick much easier when you don’t sleep, your immune system is weakened leading to more illness.
2. Not sleep is very bad for your heart. You are at higher risks for heart disease and strokes.
3. Lack of sleep is associated with increased risk for developing cancer.
4. It is hard to think straight, we’ve all dealt with this one. When you’re tired all you can think about is sleep and not doing that homework that’s due tomorrow.
5. Your memory is impacted and you cannot recall things. This one we’ve already talked about so it shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone.
6. This one might sound strange, but just bear with me. Sex drive is negatively impacted by a lack of sleep. Not sleeping lowers testosterone and other sex hormones by up to 15%.
7. You are more likely to gain weight… sad
8. Risk for diabetes goes up
9. Rates of accidents goes up, this goes along with lack of focus/thinking straight.
10. Your skin quality goes down; fine lines, wrinkles, uneven skin color, looseness of skin, etc.

If those things don’t sound bad enough, here’s a couple more shown in the figure below. Some of these things are repeats that we talked about already but some are new.

Its hard to get enough sleep when we live in a world that prioritizes productivity and working long hours. There never seems to be enough time in our day to do everything that we need to. But take this into consideration, don’t sleep just because its good for you, although that is a pretty good reason to do just that. Sleep because it will make you far better at doing those things in your day to day life that you never seem to have enough time to do. You’ll be more productive, have better quality work, and be much happier doing so. Although you might not feel like you have the time to sleep, it will be better for you in the long run if you close your eyes and get some rest.

Lets diverge a little bit into some serious material, I might be reaching here but stick with me.

“Being awake for at least 18 hours is the same as someone having  blood alcohol content of 0.05%”-the CDC

“Being awake for 24 hours is equal to having a blood alcohol content of 0.10%”- the CDC

Why do I include these two quotes from the CDC? Simple, get some sleep or your essentially drunk, we all disagree with drunk driving and doing important things while under the influence. But we should also have a similar mindset when it comes to doing things while being tired, its the same thing. I suppose the moral of the story is you could either drink a strawberry daiquiri or stay awake for 18+ hours, which is worse? Should we allow people who are that tired to drive and do other crucial things in our daily life, or should sleep deprivation be equivalent to being drunk? For example, surgeons work extremely long shifts and they are performing potentially dangerous procedures on their patient. Their shifts can be 12-28 hours long, that’s more than enough to have a BAC above the legal range. Our society needs to accept sleep rather than demonize those of us who just want to perform at our best. Don’t let your surgeon be Patrick, although he seems like a nice guy he’s not entirely in the right mindset for surgery.

References

https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/drowsy_driving.html

https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-sleep/what-happens-to-your-body-when-you-lose-sleep#accidentprone

https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-are-the-symptoms-of-sleep-deprivation-3015161

The drug Benadryl (diphenhydramine) is an OTC antihistamine used to treat symptoms allergies. The drug itself is not supposed to be used for easy sleep, but it has a sedative effect when taken, which is what causes some people to repeatedly take advantage of this medication. While many associate over-the-counter drugs with little to no abuse potential, Benadryl comes with various risks when overused (all of which the FDA has identified).

Continue reading →

Our paper for this topic talked a lot about the dysregulation and harm that can come from improperly functioning cannabinoid receptors. But for fun, lets look at one of the ways that cannabis can be used in a medical fashion, specifically PTSD. The two major contributing chemical structures in marijuana are tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). THC is responsible for the euphoric effects of marijuana while CBD is generally considered to be medicinal. CB1 receptors play a large role in our response to fear and anxiety, THC is an agonist for the CB1 receptors on GABAergic nerve terminals which actually helps regulate and prevent fear and anxiety which induces stress. Fear, anxiety, and stress are all important and high in those that suffer from PTSD. Additionally, CB1 activation also impairs the ability to retrieve aversive (negative) memories and blocks nightmares. PTSD is associated with flashbacks, nightmare, and the improper retrieval of aversive memories.  This essentially means that marijuana is a very effective method of treating PTSD as a disorder. Additionally, if you give mice (test subjects) marijuana you can prevent PTSD behaviors from ever occurring, meaning that marijuana could be used after a stressful event to prevent PTSD from ever manifesting.

The downside of marijuana in PTSD. Essentially to much THC can actually induce anxiety and psychotic disorders like PTSD. This occurs because marijuana over activates CB1 receptors in glutamatergic rather than GABAergic nerve terminals. This would mean that instead of an influx of inhibitory neurotransmitters, an influx of excitatory neurotransmitters is occurring instead, leading to anxiety and psychotic symptoms. This is especially problematic when you consider the fact that THC concentrations have increased significantly throughout the years. THC in “street marijuana” used to be at 4%, now its more than 15%. Dispensaries sell marijuana with a THC concentration of 22% and people are buying THC concentrate now instead of “normal” marijuana. With increasing THC marijuana might lose its potential to do good instead of bad. It might go from being able to treat PTSD to making PTSD far worse. Researchers are worried that the potential for psychosis and substance abuse might make marijuana a method for treatment that has more concerns and problems than benefits. There is also a potential for the development of comorbidities linked with PTSD, such as depression and anxiety. With improper regulation of THC, CB1 receptors might overstimulate the wrong neurons and lead to a bigger problem than originally was expected. There is also a lot of talk in the provided first reference about the need for increased trials and research on both the positives and negatives of marijuana. It is hard to determine exactly how beneficial something is when it has been an illegal substance for so long and has been limited to studies on lab animals rather than humans due to its illegal nature.

References

Steenkamp, M. M., Blessing, E. M., Galatzer-Levy, I. R., Hollahan, L. C., & Anderson, W. T. (2017). Marijuana and other cannabinoids as a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder: a literature review. Depression and Anxiety, 34(3), 207–216. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.22596

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/marijuana-addictive