Brain off themselves:

Researchers know that sleep deprivation makes people and less functional. Now a team of researchers from Wisconsin and Italy found that rats kept awake past times, their brain begin to turn themselves in, Neuron by neuron, but still awake rat.

Not only, but most neurons that we use during the day are the ones most likely to switch to offline mode.

"It is very worrisome. This means that even before we have a generic symbol of sleepiness, there are local signs of fatigue, have implications for the performance, "said Chiara Cirelli, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison? And one of the researchers.

"It's time I think everyone has changed to a single cell level," says Christopher Colwell, Professor, laboratory of sleep, Circadian medicine at the University of California-Los Angeles-School of medicine. "This research was wise in suggesting a whole new way of thinking about sleep."

Sleep is essential for the health of the physical and mental health of all animals, is clearly visible in the brain. During sleep, slow-wave activity in our brains as neurons in cortex turn themselves and electrically. Wakefulness is when our neurons, spikes on that produces electrical activity.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison? Laboratory for perceptual Robotics, Pisa, Italy remains the rats until four hours after their bedtimes and measure their brain waves using EEG or electroencephalogram. They found that although the rats were the cities, individual neurons lack off themselves in random. Shut down these neurons, the researchers believe, is why the rats did less well on lmhmir activity in which they were forced to find a pellet of sugar. Their research published this week's Edition of the journal nature.

There is no reason to think that it will not happen in the human brain, also of the group to carry out similar studies and Cirelli in people ready to analyze brain neural pathways that you mapped.

It think it's also probably frequent those neurons. "We have done a number of studies showing neurons use more during the day are the ones who need to go to waking sleep best when you tried. At some point, and we know exactly why, they begin to say ' tired of me. I'm going offline. ""

While many studies done how the brain works when sleeping, when you awake, looking at the functioning of the brain and the brain: this level is new, says Colwell, who wrote a viewpoint about their paper on which is also in nature this week.

"What are you suggest that in the morning, maybe 90% of your cells are in the wake, performing very well," said Colwell. "But you are awake, your cells start off you lose sleep, your performance starts to descend, which can provide an explanation on why we do less better than we were awake."

The country that they describe differently than another report on the effects of sleep deprivation, called ' microsleeps ', when people closed their eyes, suddenly stops responding to stimuli, the brain wave patterns resembling sleep. These last three chapters only up to 15 seconds and when sleep deprived subjects are very similar. This study, rats were held only for four hours to go before their normal sleep so that they were not deprived sleep difficult, just tired. To keep them awake, the researchers provided them with new objects to play with. They videotaped the rats to ensure that they are actually aware at any time.

Such checks at the level of a single neuron requires inserting electrodes into the brain, so they are unlikely to humans. However as the Builder, simulation technology soon will be able to see if the same thing happens in people.

Research means that 35% of Americans who said the Centers for disease control and prevention that are routinely sleep less than seven hours a night also have parts of their brain to go offline, even though they are still awake.

"The message is that you need to take sleep seriously," says Cirelli. "When you start to nod off, it will be too late. Even before that, the motion. Respect the need for sleep. "

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