Peels

I think there are many holes in the above referred article. For example, the article wrote: "One of the possible side effects of a continued lack of sleep is death. Usually this is the result of the fact that the immune system is weakened without sleep." To my knowledge, the above statement is solely based on animal studies, especially on rats. If taking a close look of how these studies were performed, one can easily find out that, at least, two more factors (fatigue and stress) played a significant role for the death of these rats. Just single out sleep deprivation as a root cause could not be justified by such kind of experiments. The fact is that no recorded human death has been concluded as a result of lack of sleep yet; and in one of human sleep deprivation records, a man experienced no long term negative effects after 11 days without sleep. Another example, the article wrote: "Just like a person cannot jog for three continuous days a person's brain cannot operate without rest breaks. Since different regions of the brain rest during different stages of the sleep cycle, sleep cannot be cut short. In fact, if the brain does not receive a break it will soon begin to shut down for periods of microsleep." There is no scientific result indicates that a human brain needs rest. We know that many human organs never take a break: heart, lung etc. In my view, some parts of brain can not even afford to take a break. Anyway, to assume the function of sleep is for resting the brain is problematic.

In my view, gene is a contributor (can be a sufficient factor in some cases), but not a necessary factor to schizophrenia. Everyone can have schizophrenia if under an extreme enviourment condition. The hallucination in schizophrenia is, in fact, nothing but waking dreams.

At least, this doesn't make any less sense than choosing either the egg or the chicken.

What came first the chicken or the egg? There is no right answer for it, no matter what you choose! It doesn't make sense to define the one came out of the egg as a chicken, but the one laid the egg as non-chicken. I agree with Swansont: "there's no sharp distinction that would let you make that assessment." and also agree with AzurePhoenix: "that's the biggest waste of brain power ever."

Scicop, I fully understand and agree with your reply. The first thing that I realized when I read articles from psychiatry journals was that psychiatry field is totally different with the engineering filed. When doing study in engineering field, yes, one should start from more reputable journals, because that is where the most valuable papers are published. But when doing study in psychiatry related field, one has to be open-minded, because many researchers and scientists in this field are controlled by the drug company ("whores of the industry" as you termed), and so these high citation indexes journals. As a result, many articles published on these journals are not that valuable, and even sometimes misleading. I have no doubt that the papers I referred above will never be accepted by these journals because of their views. However, in my opinion, to better understand psychiatry, one really needs to study views from both anti-psychiatry and pro-psychiatry.

As beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, which means facial attraction must be related with personal experiences (memory), therefore, it should be saved somewhere in the cortex.

The only comment to your post is: not all papers that published in a high citation index journal are jewels, and not all papers "published in a journal called 'medical hypothesis'" are crappy one. As a scientist, you should judge a paper by its scientific value not the name of the journal, especially, when its view against the main stream's.

First, I would like to say that this is a science debate forums, therefore, any articles that I referred are only for the purpose of food for thoughts. I am neither anti-psychiatry nor pro-psychiatry.

"The case against antipsychotic drugs: a 50-year record of doing more harm than good" http://psychrights.org/Research/Digest/Chronicity/50yearecord.pdf Is newer atypical antipsychotic drugs more effective than the old typical antipsychotic? Please read this article: "Schizophrenia Drugs About The Same" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/19/health/main858922.shtml or this article: "NIMH Study to Guide Treatment Choices for Schizophrenia" http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/sep2005/nimh-19.htm

When the CPU of my old computer stopped functioning, I decided to try to fix it myself although I don't know too much about computer. Even though I knew I would be ended in a failure, I still did it. What a big deal, as I wanted to buy a new one anyway. This is a different story to fix a human brain. We can not just simply do it by trial and error. How much do we understand about these neurotransmitters when we decide to change them by these neuroleptic drugs? We should keep this in mind that all neuroleptics are neurotoxin! Please read this article: "Should the use of neuroleptics be severely limited?" by Peter R. Breggin, M.D. http://www.breggin.com/neuroleptics.html

Diabetes is only a part of the prices that they are paying. Antipsychotic drugs may produce much more serious side effects, such as parkinsonism, akathisia, dystonia, and tardive dyskinesia, tachycardia, hypotension, impotence, lethargy, seizures and hyperprolactinaemia.

I think it is caused by the sensory memory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_memory

Schizophrenia = X% of genetic + (100-X)% of environmental X from 0 to 100.

Hallucination is not a result of the brain having "too much incoming signals". It is the opposite. Without external stimulations, all human brain will start to hallucinate. The brain filter theory of hallucination doesn't fit the facts. Just take a look about how we induce the dreaming state; also do a search about John Lilly's isolation tank.

Hi Tony (Bgoatgruff), I tried to connect to your live webcam, but failed. How are you doing for your sleep deprivation world record attempt? Can you describe some details about your experiment? It seems to me that you have recently contacted with Robert McDonald. Do you have more details about that experiment? Thanks.

No, I don't have any other examples. I did read several other cases similar to the Vietnam man one; however, these reports can not prove anything. The human sleep deprivation record that I accepted is, so far, 264 hrs by Randy Gardner, as it is detained in Dr. Dement's book: The Promise of Sleep. As to Robert McDonald's 453 hrs 40 min world record, I'm still trying to look for the details about how the test was performed.

I have never heard of anyone died from sleep deprivation either.

Take a look of this theory: Memory Process and the Function of Sleep http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/Articles/6-6/Zhang.pdf

In my opinion, a new born human baby has consciousness, but not self-awareness. Self-awareness is developed through conscious learning. It is a product of consciousness. Language and imagination are all the same cases. One could not perform imagination without a saved memory bank. However, a human can still be conscious even lost all his memory.

I know what you mean. It is, in fact, a very interesting question. In my opinion, the brain stem is the powerhouse for brain and whole neuron system. Therefore, the answer to your question has to wait until a better understanding about the mechanism of brain stem. However, I do think the idea of "mechanical intervention" is plausible for this "neuron heart", although electrical and chemical based driving force is surely involved.

Based on your post, I don't see any sign of neurological problem, but disorganization. If you pay more attention to things that needs to be memorized and create a good habit, you will be fine.

Hallucination happens when the sensory input level is lower than a given threshold. Therefore, there are two ways to trigger the hallucination mechanism: decreasing the sensory input and/or increasing the threshold. Some examples are sensory isolation, sensory deprivation, jamming the sensory circuits, hallucinogenic drugs, alcohol etc.

In my view, to create human memory is to create a memory association-network. If with enough cues, one still could not recall many events that s/he experienced before, I would assume it is very likely a neurological problem.

My understanding is for memory processing.