I find myself agreeing with most of his premises. Except that sleep and memory arent really linked. From experience as a pianist, one can play a difficult passage on the keyboard and get stuck one day one, stop to sleep, and on day two have an accelerated mastery that wasnt present at the end of day one. it’s integration of these actions/skills specifically during sleep and probably dreams, so it is muscle memory, somewhat unconscious, yet still a kind of memory, yes? I swear by the truth of this, from personal experience.
Additionally, having been depressed from age 4, from age 7 i would typically compensate by staying up late at night reading. I did not know this is what i was doing, but the sleep deprivation led to problems with mania in my teens and twenties, when i started to confront somewhat serious mental problems. (I am not diagnosed manic-depressive). To this day i have issues with managing my sleep. It’s not that i am not tired or cant fall asleep. I love to sleep and it is wonderful. It’s just that often I crave the dopamine or whatever neurochemical from novel experiences remaining awake. This is expressed as a desire not to miss out on experiences. It could be partying late when younger, but these days could be expressed as staying up to watch youtube videos.
Just some thoughts bc your piece really spoke to my experience and I wanted to weigh in.
So this writing I really appreciated. Thank you for producing this.
I find myself agreeing with most of his premises. Except that sleep and memory arent really linked. From experience as a pianist, one can play a difficult passage on the keyboard and get stuck one day one, stop to sleep, and on day two have an accelerated mastery that wasnt present at the end of day one. it’s integration of these actions/skills specifically during sleep and probably dreams, so it is muscle memory, somewhat unconscious, yet still a kind of memory, yes? I swear by the truth of this, from personal experience.
Additionally, having been depressed from age 4, from age 7 i would typically compensate by staying up late at night reading. I did not know this is what i was doing, but the sleep deprivation led to problems with mania in my teens and twenties, when i started to confront somewhat serious mental problems. (I am not diagnosed manic-depressive). To this day i have issues with managing my sleep. It’s not that i am not tired or cant fall asleep. I love to sleep and it is wonderful. It’s just that often I crave the dopamine or whatever neurochemical from novel experiences remaining awake. This is expressed as a desire not to miss out on experiences. It could be partying late when younger, but these days could be expressed as staying up to watch youtube videos.
Just some thoughts bc your piece really spoke to my experience and I wanted to weigh in. So this writing I really appreciated. Thank you for producing this.