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The story
A research team including scientists from MIT has published a paper in Science Translational Medicine testing, in humans, whether playing sound timed to brain-wave activity during sleep can strengthen the flow of cerebrospinal fluid that clears waste from the brain. The sound used was “pink noise” — similar to rain or a waterfall — played in sync with the peaks of slow brain waves. On the 5ch thread, discussion initially centered not on the research itself but on how the term “pink noise” sounded suspiciously like something risqué, before settling down once posters realized it actually refers to natural sounds like rain or a babbling stream. Meanwhile, some questioned whether the study’s method — delivering sound at pinpoint timing while simultaneously monitoring brain waves and fMRI — could really be replicated at home.
Listening to “pink noise” during sleep boosts the flushing of “brain trash”? MIT runs a human experiment, publishes in a Science-affiliated journal
A paper published in Science Translational Medicine by researchers affiliated with MIT and others, titled “Closed-loop auditory stimulation in phase with slow waves during sleep enhances cerebrospinal fluid flow in humans,” reports on research testing whether playing sound at specific moments during sleep can artificially boost the flow of cerebrospinal fluid that flushes waste out of the brain.
(Omitted below — see the source for the rest)
Source: itmedia.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Like hell I could sleep through that!!
Same thought here, lol
Apparently it just means natural sounds like rain or a babbling brook.
There are actually products for that now.
Is playing a set audio track at a scheduled time on a smartphone or mini stereo really that hard?
Honestly, it might be the opposite of "squeaky clean"…
Especially on the days with tens of millimeters an hour…
That reminds me of Somerset Maugham's classic short story "Rain" — the characters in it also lose their sanity under day after day of relentless rain.
https://lib.hannan-u.ac.jp/lib/material/recommended/recommend_2209.html
The World of Somerset Maugham — "Rain" and "The Summing Up"
The hidden protagonist of this short story is "the rain" itself. Let me quote a bit of its description:
>"It was a pitiless rain, with something almost monstrous about it.
>You could feel in it something like the malice of some primitive, elemental force.
>(…) It was like a deluge from heaven, beating down on the corrugated iron roof with a relentlessness that could drive a person mad.
>The rain itself seemed to be in a towering rage at something." (p. 40)
The ceaseless downpour gradually frays the characters' nerves.
Pink noise goes ♪swoosh
Sleep like a baby.
Don't let AI pull one over on you.
Their long-awaited new single: "Nose-kaigan, Kizuite Station" (a nonsense, made-up-sounding title)
This time they're taking on sung-and-danced enka.
More room to pack dreams in, then.
>>To deliver the acoustic stimulus precisely at the peak of the slow wave, you have to measure the sleeping person's brain waves in real time while simultaneously monitoring cerebrospinal fluid flow via fMRI.
That's just for measuring purposes during the experiment, right? Seems like you could just leave it playing the whole time you're asleep.
Not sure why, but it really helps me focus.
Maybe you've got ADHD? I do, and noise/avant-garde music works great for me.
…oh wait, that's white noise, lol
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The brain’s waste-clearing mechanism during sleep is known as the “glymphatic system,” thought to work via cerebrospinal fluid circulating through brain tissue. This study tested whether a “closed-loop” auditory stimulus — sound timed to the peaks of slow waves (slow brain-wave oscillations) during sleep — could artificially boost this cerebrospinal fluid flow, verifying the effect with fMRI; it was published in Science Translational Medicine. What split opinion on the thread was whether this could be replicated at home: the study delivered sound at precisely targeted moments while monitoring brain waves and fMRI in real time, so it’s not necessarily the same as simply playing rain or waterfall sounds on a loop. Posters also repeatedly noted that the term “pink noise” sounds suggestive and invites misunderstanding, but it’s actually an acoustics term for a category of random noise whose intensity rises as frequency falls (a “1/f fluctuation” pattern) — just one type alongside white noise and brown noise. Some commercial sleep-aid devices and apps already use sounds like these, but it hasn’t been shown whether consumer products can replicate the brain-wave-synced stimulation used in this study.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread “Listening to “pink noise” during sleep boosts the flushing of “brain trash”? MIT runs a human experiment.”
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