If you do not snooze you lose: sleep seen as essential for the brain

By Will Dunham

 

FILE PHOTO: A girl sleeps while waiting for the arrival of Pope Francis at St. Peter’s Parish church in the Sam Phran district of Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand, November 22, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva/File Photo

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists are providing a fuller understanding of the essential role that sleep plays in brain health, identifying an abrupt transition at about 2.4 years of age when its primary purpose shifts from brain building to maintenance and repair.

 

Researchers on Friday said they conducted a statistical analysis on data from more than 60 sleep studies. They looked at sleep time, duration of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, brain size and body size, and devised a mathematical model for how sleep changes during development.

 

There are basically two types of sleep, each tied to specific brain waves and neuronal activity. REM, with the eyes moving quickly from side to side behind closed eyelids, is deep sleep with vivid dreams. Non-REM sleep is largely dreamless.

 

During REM sleep, the brain forms new neural connections by building and strengthening synapses - the junctions between nerve cells, or neurons - that enable them to communicate, reinforcing learning and consolidating memories.

During sleep, the brain also repairs the modicum of daily neurological damage it typically experiences to genes and proteins within neurons as well as clearing out byproducts that build up.

 

At about 2.4 years of age, the findings showed, sleep's primary function changed from building and cutting connections during REM sleep to neural repair during both REM and non-REM sleep.

 

"It was shocking to us that this transition was like a switch and so sharp," said Van Savage, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of computational medicine who is a senior author of the research published in the journal Science Advances.

 

REM sleep declines with age. Newborns, who can sleep about 16 hours daily, spend about 50% of their sleeping time in REM, but there is a pronounced drop-off at around 2.4 years. It drops to about 25% by age 10 and to about 10% to 15% around age 50.

 

"Sleep is required across the animal kingdom and is nearly as ubiquitous as eating and breathing," Van Savage said. "I'd say it is a pillar of human health."

 

(Reporting by Will Dunham; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-09-20

 

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Well, based on the information in this article, I am a little shy of 2.4 years old!

 

Yaun hey wake me up November 4 th please lol hey a good blinky by by recharges the old battery and I’ve come up with some great ideas when asleep just got to wright them down right away

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

I am happy to hear that the outstanding elite researchers in the US, finally come to the point that they understand the brain as well as the rest of the human body needs sleep to function properly. At the same time they also found out what´s wrong with their president. Time to put him to sleep. ???? 

Newborns spent 16 hours sleeping, half of it dreaming :what do they dream about? They haven't had any experiences yet. About rolling around in the womb maybe. 

15 hours ago, Tug said:

Yaun hey wake me up November 4 th please lol hey a good blinky by by recharges the old battery and I’ve come up with some great ideas when asleep just got to wright them down right away

"Write them down right away" reminds me of the instruction given by the Victorian scientist, who was investigating the effects of nitrous oxide (I think). He believed that he was getting great insights in his dreams when he was under the effect of this. He instructed his students to write down the first words  he spoke when he awoke. 

They were:-

Higamous hogamous woman is monogamous

Hogamous higamous man is polygamous.

17 hours ago, rooster59 said:

"Sleep is required across the animal kingdom and is nearly as ubiquitous as eating and breathing," Van Savage said. "I'd say it is a pillar of human health."

I get the feeling this is about as obvious as the need to urinate instead of exploding like a water balloon

How much did this fantastic study cost? 

What's next Does the sun shine when its night time ????