Yo-El Ju

It was very cool.

I think we need to be a little bit cautious in thinking of sleep as just like a time when we washed away toxins.

Because the glymphatic system, right, which is a system that was described involving glia and the perivascular spaces and the clearance of solutes in the interstitial fluid, that's very different from, for example, what was studied in that study, which is the movement of cerebrospinal fluid across the fourth ventricle.

So, you know, just the scales of the size of spaces are very different in those two models.

And it is very appealing for me to think of, oh, when I'm sleeping, it's like a big old dishwasher and I'm getting everything cleaned out.

And, you know, if thinking of it that way helps people, you know, maintain regular sleep schedules and to prioritize their sleep health, I say great.

But I think we should also remember that there's...

the cells in the brain are putting stuff into the interstitial space, right?

So there's the creation of solutes and putting the amyloid beta and all the other waste products need to get into that space somehow, right?

And that happens when people are awake.

So I think that there is both a change in production or release of those things, as well as a change in clearance.

during sleep.

So I think we need to be careful about not being too simplistic about how we think about sleep.

Well, one, they're extremely rare.

I think a lot of people wish that they came from one of these families.

I do as well.

I don't know whether it would actually be that useful to try to

copy whatever molecular or genetic mechanism is going on because, one, it's, you know, these are extremely small numbers of people, right?

They're all within, you know, one or two kindreds.

So I don't know if it's worth trying to copy that or not.