Plasticity and language in the anaesthetized human hippocampus

pstuart

I guess this makes sense -- a brain is gonna do brain stuff. The only difference is that we're not present to witness it.

johnbarron

This is not new. Read Phantoms in the Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantoms_in_the_Brain

alexfromapex

I would think anesthesia, in specific doses, would only attenuate consciousness...if it stopped other processes your organs and nervous system would stop. I guess this confirms that.

healthworker

This is strong evidence against LLMs experiencing qualia. (I know that that topic often gets people laughed out of the room but please don't jump on me for engaging in that debate. When we can collect evidence and be able to show it to people.)

slicktux

I sometimes ge the most complex logical dreams whilst going to sleep on a programming problem. The dreams are normal dreams but structured like a programming problem or logic…it’s like my brain is trying to dream normally but it’s also Fixated on programming logic so it subliminally incorporates it into dreams. Then I wake up and I feel like I’ve compiled the whole code in my head and did not rest.

jdw64

If that mechanism can be activated, it may significantly compress the time required for education and learning.

westurner

ScholarlyArticle: "Plasticity and language in the anaesthetized human hippocampus" (2026) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10448-0 Sleep-learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep-learning Also, Sleep and learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_learning