Melatonin and derivatives found to enhance long-term object recognition memory | Hacker News Reader

Melatonin and derivatives found to enhance long-term object recognition memory

medicalxpress.com

21 pointsPaulHoule10 comments

I'm not sure we should be massively surprised by this, I didn't read the study, but increased melatonin could lead to increased sleep depth, or time spent in deep sleep, which has been strongly correlated to memory.

Melatonin is a hormone, so it's like saying "Testosterone and derivatives found to increase muscle generation and fat loss".

Now, having said that, it doesn't mean we should be giving everyone megadoses of testosterone as we do with melatonin, handing it out like candy.

I do have a horse in this race, as we've been working on increasing the efficiency of deep sleep through neurofeedback/neurostimulation (auditory) at https://soundmind.co

Unrelated website note: It looks like you're using overflow-wrap: break-word on your titles. For me, that causes the title Sleep Performance to read as:

Sleep

Performanc

I'm now imagining a remake of Inception where the dreamlike elements are all CSS styling errors.

Thanks! We're in the process of updating the website as we get ready for our private beta, but I'll get that fixed up first (and make sure it isn't an issue in the new version).

Does it also does tracking like Dreem?

We are using the same science that drove Dreem. You can't do neurofeedback without high resolution data and real-time stimulation.

We are currently designing the data experience. What is valuable to show people. Hypnograms are everywhere, and it tells part of the story of sleep, but we're looking if there is a better way to explain sleep to people, and particularly what the stimulation is doing in their sleep.

This is because the stimulation doesn't significantly change the amount of time spent in deep sleep. It alters sleep depth, but that is different from time.

The measure used in neuroscience is delta power, but that isn't something we can expose to the target audience (I don't think) or not in the way it is currently spoken about. So we are looking at how to package that.

Is that what you were asking? For what data we will expose? Or did you have another question about the tracking?

The study used 1mg/kg, a dose if used in humans is 10-100x higher than typical supplement dosage. NIH studies found high melatonin supplementation increases cognitive problems (and probably make you groggy throughout the day). Caution warranted.

The doses in some melatonin pills are ridiculous. While each person is different, I found that cutting a 3 mg pill into quarters lessens the weird dreams and next day grogginess but has about the same power inducing sleep as higher doses.

Thankfully it doesn’t make me feel groggy, because I rather like the weird dreams!

1mg/kg is beyond ridiculous. 1mg per night is enough for lots of the people for sleeping. Beyond that dosage they would feel drowsy in the day

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