Sleeping neurons may be at the root of the most common symptoms of sleep deprivation, including attention lapses, poor judgment, and frequent mistakes in cognitive tasks. Specifically, populations of neurons in the brains of rats forced to stay awake briefly go "off-line," into a sleep-like state, according to a study published today (April 27) in linkurl:Nature.;http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html
"We've all have this experience where we're forcing ourselves to stay awake later than we usually do," said linkurl:Christopher Colwell,;http://faculty.bri.ucla.edu/institution/personnel?personnel_id=45975 who studies sleep and circadian rhythms at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was not involved in the study. "We can still perform -- we're still obviously awake -- but...a person's performance is not as good," he said. "So, what's going on during that time?"Neuroscientist linkurl:Giulio Tononi,;http://tononi.psychiatry.wisc.edu/People/GiulioTononi.html along with Vlad Vyazovskiy and a team at the University of...
 |
Courtesy of Yuval Nir, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
Nature. Vyazovskiy, V., et al., "Local sleep in awake rats," Nature, 472:443-7, 2011.
Interested in reading more?
Become a Member of
Receive full access to more than 35 years of archives, as well as TS Digest, digital editions of The Scientist, feature stories, and much more!
