December 17, 2013

Scientists Have Finally Found The First Real Reason We Need To Sleep


From BusinessInsider.com

Scientists Have Finally Found The First Real Reason We Need To Sleep
JENNIFER WELSH | OCT. 17, 2013


We know we need to sleep. We know our brains and bodies work better after sleep. But what we didn't know, until now, was why.

Scientists have just reported the first major mechanical reason our brains need to sleep — certain cleaning mechanisms in the brain work better when we shut the brain down. Just like how dump trucks take to the city streets during the pre-dawn hours because there's less traffic, our brain's cleaners also work best when there's less going on.

"This study shows that the brain has different functional states when asleep and when awake," study researcher Maiken Nedergaard, of the University of Rochester said in a statement. "In fact, the restorative nature of sleep appears to be the result of the active clearance of the by-products of neural activity that accumulate during wakefulness."

We've known that our brains consolidate memories during sleep and perform other important functions. There are also benefits to the body during sleep  — resting allows our muscles, bones, and organs to repair themselves. It also keeps our immune system healthy.

We know that sleep has all of these benefits, but until now we didn't know any of the specific changes that bring about these sleep benefits.

Charles Czeisler, a sleep researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston, told Science Magazine's Emily Underwood that this is the "first direct experimental evidence at the molecular level" for why we need to sleep.

The paper was published in the journal Science on Oct. 17.

Picture of brain from Bsiness Insider:



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