Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation due to flushing fluid from brain

Sure it's a real thing for memories to surface that were previously buried. It's happened to me.

If it happens in therapy, that doesn't mean the memories are "implanted". And not all memories lack the ability to validate them... for example, if you've forgotten someone's name, then remember it later, you can call out to them by their name to confirm that you've correctly remembered it.

Memories tumble around in the brain all the time, not all memories are easy to access, but that doesn't mean they're inaccessible.

The point that memories can also be implanted or fabricated during therapy is absolutely an important one, but dismissing the possibility for memories to resurface (and conflating any situation where this might happen with a specific type of discredited therapy) is needlessly reductive.

There are two types of repression, however. The notion that primarily repressed memories--say, those of being breastfed, of being potty trained--could ever resurface is bogus of course. But it is that original violence, first of being cared for, and then having that care taken away and even, in many cases, transforming into authoritarian violence in order to be socialized properly, that precipitates all other "secondary" repressions like Freudian slips, even screen memories or rationalizations. No, most people traumatized past the age of say, 5, won't readily forget it. But perhaps they will have a way of reconciling with that trauma in an unhealthy or not fully conscious manner (consider self-harming, or drug abuse, making up a narrative in order to stay with a partner who violently abuses them). And they will not readily connect their traumatic experiences with their unhealthy coping mechanisms. And we could say that the connection between unconscious behaviors and trauma, when revealed, could be considered a "re-surfacing." Even if I can't remember being breastfed, I know that I find the warm embrace of another's arm's comforting and soothing, and this perhaps relates to my original state of relaxation as a child in my mother's arms, for instance.

The problem is not that memories can't be repressed. There's plenty of research demonstrating repression does exist as a defence mechanism. The problem is that even highly evocative memories can also relatively easily be falsified, or modified through elicitation and reframing. Since there's no neurological stenographer, there is no mechanism even in principle to identify the difference between the two. With potential consequences like the satanic panic of recovered and elicited memories of sexual abuse. That's what Elizabeth Loftus and others have shown, and shown so thoroughly that eye witness testimony should never be trusted.

This idea of unconscious memories perhaps being a type of fantasy is also discussed in this article too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud%27s_seduction_theory

People can remember things that hadn’t re-entered their mind for decades. It certainly happened to me a number of times (completely trauma-unrelated and not actively elicited).

The statement "there is evidence of black swans" does not justify the conclusion "every swan is black".

I beg to differ, or at least I'd need clarification, some people experience traumatic visions from what is assumed repressed memories (with or without therapy)

It might be something that one might not understand if he/she doesn't live through it I guess

What about Dr. Jim Tucker’s two child psych cases, James Leininger and Ryan Hammons?

One remembered memories of a WWII pilot named James Huston Jr. and the other a deceased Hollywood agent named Marty Martyn.

Putting aside the reincarnation hypothesis for the moment, do you think the kids invented the details and coincidentally happened to match to a real person or were they fully coached? Maybe they didn’t get enough sleep or got too much sleep?

No, a lapsed memory can be provoked. It doesn't have to be relearned. It is "lapsed" because the organizational path to it within your brain has been lost, like a book in a library that has been left out of the card catalog, but just like the book, if you happen to find it anyway, it will be there.

Compare, from https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/anthropology-... :

> at the first news of English ships in the area, Buckley rushed to the spot. He attempted to make contact, but couldn’t swim out to the ship and couldn’t convince the ship to send a boat to him (Buckley had, at this point, forgotten how to speak English.) Buckley was again heartbroken until another ship showed up, and he found the English colonists and tried to approach them:

> “Presently some of the natives saw me, and turning round, pointed me out to one of the white people; and seeing they had done so, I walked away from the well, up to their place, and seated myself there, having my spears and other war and hunting implements between my legs. The white men could not make me out–my half-cast colour, and extraordinary height and figure [Buckley was around 6’5” or taller,]–dressed, or rather undressed, as I was–completely confounding them as to my real character. At length one of them came up and asked me some questions, which I could not understand; but when he offered me bread–calling it by its name–a cloud appeared to pass from over my brain, and I soon repeated that, and other English words after him. …

> “Word by word I began to comprehend what they said, and soon understood, as if by instinct, that they intended to remain in the country; that they had seen several of the native chiefs, with whom–as they said–they had exchanged all sorts of things for land; but that I knew could not have been

I submit that it takes more than a day to learn English if you don't already know it.

Once I was in a Toys-R-Us and noticed a cover image among the bottom-of-the-barrel DVD display which caused me to put what I was doing on hold for several minutes while I stared at the DVD. I bought it, and it turned out to be a movie I had watched many times when I was very young, but that information hadn't been accessible to me.

If you are implying that human memory has infinite capacity, that's not possible. The human brain is a finite, physical thing. It can't store an infinite amount of data.

If you just mean that human memory has a finite capacity that's much larger than anyone has come close to reaching by storing the memories of a normal human lifetime, that might make sense.

Do you have any references for your statements about memory? I'm not familiar with whatever science there is in this area.

Bullocks. Memories fade. Or do you really believe that 'subconsciously' I still know what I had for dinner today exactly 30 years ago?

The way I understand it, it's just that, unlike on disk, the deletion process is not binary. Weak connections that are not revisited regularly gradually become weaker, until they're undistinguishable from noise (false memories).

Knowing almost nothing about memory and the brain, I don't know if I agree with "Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there".

Memories seem to be constructed by a group of neurons together, and it seems clear that neurodegeneration is a thing, whether by trauma or due to aging. When pathways degenerate, maybe you have a partial memory that you brain can help fill the gaps with(and often incorrectly), but that does not make it the original memory.

I had this experience at Big Bend State park that makes me think they are. I didn't bring enough water and camped in the primitive area. At night, I was dehydrated pretty bad. When I finally got a little sleep (it was tough to say the least), I had this vivid dream where I put a pebble in my mouth and started sucking on it to make saliva. Then I woke up for real, and I knew it because there was a lot of wind IRL, that wasn't in the dream. So I took out a coin from my back, put it in my mouth to make saliva, and got a little bit of relief. Enough for a couple hours until it was dawn, and had enough light to hike down to the restroom area.

I don't know where I got this trick. Likely some survival show or some novel. But I don't have any background in survival, otherwise, I would have brought a lot more water.

So my brain knew there was a memory that could help and made up a dream about it is my theory.

Instead of 1 doctor covering a 24 hour shift, why not pair them and overlap?

12:00am - 6:00am: Doctor 1 and Doctor 4 are doing everything together.

6:00am - 12:00pm: Doctor 1 and Doctor 2 are doing everything together.

12:00pm - 6:00pm: Doctor 2 and Doctor 3 are doing everything together.

6:00pm - 12:00am: Doctor 3 and Doctor 4 are doing everything together.

This way, all 4 doctors only do 12 hour shifts, and the patient's state is maintained continuously through all 24 hours.

> Yes, a tired doctor sucks. But a tired doctor who already has the patient's state loaded into their head may still be better than doctor who is completely fresh in both senses.

AI fixes this. Imagine the boot time of loading a patient's state from dozens of labs and files vs. a summary that gets you to exactly what they're going to end up remembering anyways. And if a doctor finds something interesting that the AI doesn't flag, they should be flagging it in the chart for the next doctor anyways.

What about the harm to the doctor themselves+the harm to the patient? Would the sum of both be worse?

That only works if the mean stay in the hospital (or at least the critical care period) is several hours but also way below 24h…

> My understanding is that the research shows that the harm to patient care from information loss during doctor shift turnover is worse than the harm from fatigued doctors.

This would not appear to apply to emergency surgeries. They aren't done by doctors who are familiar with the patient anyway. (Neither are non-emergency surgeries. Surgeries are done by doctors who do that kind of surgery. Familiarity with the patient is useful in deciding what surgery should be done, but not in doing the surgery.)

The European Working Time Directive has requirements for rest, etc. Either Europeans have much better hand-off procedures, they don't know how to comply with the rules they make, or they're fucking idiots who are going to kill people due to information loss during shift turnover. It was proposed decades ago. I wonder what compliance is like in Germany, etc.

If OP feels the same way, I offer my heartfelt apologies.

I don't think what I said would come across this negatively in person though, but okay..

It’s an interesting paradox.

Imagine doing your best to help someone and they die as a direct result.

Then you get to go to work and deal with the next case.

Or the patient has life changing, negative outcomes. Damn, that bad. Next case.

That takes a pretty unusual character type. We can expect some extreme behaviour.

> still has to work 24 hour shifts with no sleep

Reads like being more or less forced to me, it doesn't to you?

> and why the personal attack?

Not at all my intention! It's a genuine question, which I would ask myself too were I in OP's shoes

Yeah, when I was looking into the plausibility and function of polyphasic sleep, I stumbled across studies from the US Airforce. Their conclusion was similar: In a controlled enviroment, it can be spectacular and work really, really well.

However, it is very, very fragile to any kind of interruption, so they stopped looking into it.

When I worked an overnight shift and lived alone, I got into a pattern of 2 to 3 hours a go three times a day. These were after work, halfway or so through my personal time, and before work. I used these separate times in between sleeps for work, almost exclusively for chores, and a dedicated slot for hobbies. I started each one refreshed, which was great. It doesn’t necessarily work so well when aligning your life with a partner.

It probably depends on how much sleep you're lacking, and how long the nap is.

My experience after sleeplessness nights is that even few seconds help significantly, especially when you're almost unable to function anymore.

If the nap lasts longer than 30 minutes, though, you have a good chance of feeling groggy afterwards.

What happened? Did they pass or something or just stop posting or what?

Everyone has an LLM tool a couple clicks away if they want it, so I don't think we need this kind of contribution. And this summary is too much of a summary to be useful anyways.

There is much more to it.

There is such a thing as state-dependent memory or context-dependent memory: recall is better when the environmental context (e.g. location, lighting, smells) matches the context of learning.

If you study while on Adderall, which alters your neurochemical state (increasing dopamine and norepinephrine activity), you may recall that material more effectively when you are in the same neurochemical state, that is, also on Adderall.

Similarly, if someone learns something while sober, they will generally recall it better when sober again, rather than under the influence of a drug.

It is the phenomenon where memory recall is improved when the internal physiological or psychological state matches that during learning.

The comment above reduces the interesting article to a lacking one sentence summary. It is indicative of someone who is both too lazy to read something for themselves and for some reason thinks it is a good idea to admit this publicly.