Notices by chiasm@mastodon.online, page 3

Week 2, day 5 of pink noise--down around 10 pm, awake at 4 am (SIGH). No dreams as I recall. Lots of stress over deadlines etc. Blargh.

Week 2, day 7 of pink noise--in bed by 9:30, awake after 3ish, back down until 5:20. And oh my there were dreams, though I think a lot of it was influenced by recent zoom calls and TV shows. But that's two weeks of pink noise vs one of white (plus the previous year of white noise but I don't have night by night records of it). Time to take a look at the data!

Forgot to update: Week 2, day 6 of pink noise--in bed by 9:15 pm, awake at 1ish for a bathroom break, and back down until the alarm went off at 5:30 am. Now that's a night's sleep!! ::bounce bounce:: and I did have dreams; I remembered over breakfast I'd been trying to order a cinnamon bun somewhere and the vendor was very annoyed that I didn't know *exactly* which bun I wanted. 😂

Sleep report: there we have it, folks: I started this because I was sleeping less than 7 hours on average, with white noise on every night. With 12 recorded nights of pink noise and 7 of white noise, the pink noise is just edging ahead of the white noise in terms of hours slept each night; 8/12 nights with dreams for pink, 3/7 for white; 9/12 nights recorded as good or better for sleep quality (subjective), only 1 out of 7 for white. Not sure if this would generalize to a larger sample. YMMV.

Week 2, day 2 of pink noise at night--didn't fall asleep until after 11 pm (my bad, I was refusing to put down the phone and sleep), and awake at 4:30. There were some vivid dreams in there that I remembered at 5 am but don't any more. So not great, but I was also bad for playing with my phone after lights out. 😄

Week 2, day 4 of pink noise at night--down around 9:15 or so, awake at 2ish for a bathroom break, figured I'd try going back to sleep, and off again until maybe quarter to 5. No dreams to speak of. Next week is week 2 of white noise and then we'll have some data to look at. (unblinded, but when you're running yourself as the test subject, y'know...) 😁

Week 2, day 3 of pink noise at night--down by 9ish, up around 6ish, so that's a good night's sleep! And there were definitely some dreams in there but they vanished as soon as I woke up.

@tagomago They are indeed--and see here, the brain is actually doing something recognizable when you're dreaming -- 😂 "The scientists recruited people to their sleep lab and used functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) imaging to decode dreams indirectly..."

https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.2504

Day 2 of white noise--down by 10 pm, awake to pee at 4 am, couldn't get back to sleep (fussing over whether I really want to go for a job in Canada before the US goes the way of Hungary and Turkey--fun times). I did have some good dreams, though.
So far, the pink noise week was better, but it's not an entirely fair comparison as we are now two weeks into the semester, the deadlines are ramping up, etc. Next week will be high stress too and we'll see if the pink noise works any better.

Day 3 of white noise--down before 9:30, awake at 3:30. Mind you, I wasn't stressed, I'd been having good dreams, I was comfy and relaxed; I just couldn't get back to sleep, like I was convinced it was 5 or 5:30, early but at least a reasonable time to get up.

SIGH. Nope. Serving as my own Data Safety Management Board for this clinical trial of N=1, I am watching the situation closely to see if I need to call it off and go back to pink noise. Maybe one more night , since it's Friday.

Day 5 of white noise, down around 9 pm, awake again around 4--so a decent amount of sleep, I just crashed earlier than I'd like and thus woke up earlier. No dreams that I remember.

Day 4 of white noise, down at 10:30, a disturbed night, lots of moments of lightly waking up and going back to sleep, no dreams--but when I finally got up, it was 6:30. Not sure what to make of that. But that's why we collect data. Let's see what happens on Days 5 and 6.

Day 6 of white noise--down at 9 pm, awake once right after midnight for a bathroom break, then down again until 5ish, not quite asleep but darned close when the alarm went off, and I turned it off and burrowed back under the covers for another half hour (i.e. I was relaxed and wanted to keep sleeping, rather than being like omg I'm up I'm up). No dreams I remember, though. One more night and we'll go back to pink noise, and start collating these results...

Day 7 of white noise at night--down at 10 pm, awake at 5 am, and there were lots of dreams. But I woke up with a headache, as I had on Monday, and as I had on Friday, which is definitely odd. I'm looking forward to going back to pink noise tonight, on the off chance there really is a difference!

Week 2, day 1 of pink noise at night (not like you all need to know this, I'm just using it as a logfile)--down for sleep around 9:45, up at 5:45 (and up once in the middle for a bathroom break). No dreams that I recall, but on a scale of 1 to 5 for "did you dream last night" where 1 is "I closed my eyes and it was morning" and 5 is "omg I was off on an adventure for *years* last night", I'd be probably be a 2 rather than a 1. There might have been something, not sure. 🤣

Week 2 day 0 of pink noise--last night doesn't really count, I'd had a non-stop headache all day that was totally draining, made me irritable and tired, and I dozed while watching TV from after dinner until about 8:30 and then slept fitfully until about 4 am. So, yeah: Reset and start again tonight. But Thank God the headache is finally gone!

Funny how the day goes so much faster actually at the office. I think that's because I lose time commuting back and forth, I lose time walking back and forth to various places on campus, I lose time getting coffee, walking around the building to the restroom, etc. Huh. Actually even wtih all the goofing off on the fediverse etc., I'm more efficient at home.

@tagomago @markusl that's hypothalamus, and it's a teeny little lump below the thalamus that doesn't show up well on MRI scans, isn't directly related to cognitive processes, and I tend to ignore it. 😂 But it's really important for keeping you alive, internal temperature regulation, appetite, sleep, etc. --I will put a plug in, here: Wikipedia has its faults, but for neuroanatomy and basic neuroscience ideas, generally it's trustworthy. I just checked my own memory about the hypoth. there. 😄

@tagomago @markusl 🌟 🌟 Your hippocampus is working! That's the 30,000 foot view of what it does, yeah. It's one of those key brain areas for keeping our sense of temporal continuity together and allowing us to retrieve various kinds of memories. The thalamus is also really important for keeping our consciousness going, but luckily it's not as much of a weakling as the hippocampus is.

@tagomago @markusl I'm no expert on cortisol, and cortisol does important things, but it also serves as a marker of too much stress, and elevated cortisol correlates with reduced hippocampal volume (do you know what the hippocampus is?). Long-term meditators seem to avoid hippocampal volume loss and frontal cortex volume loss, in some studies. The hippocampus also responds well to exercise, but badly to being overweight and smoking, iIrc. It's a sensitive part of the brain! /fin