Lack of sleep causes memory loss, says study
Posted on: 18/Feb/2017 4:14:15 PM
A new study conducted on mice has said that memories are in danger of being lost if you are sleep derived. The study was conducted by researchers of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. A summary of their study appears online in the journal Science.
Say the researchers, Our findings solidly advance the idea that the mouse and presumably the human brain can only store so much information before it needs to recalibrate. Without sleep and the recalibration that goes on during sleep, memories are in danger of being lost. Scientists believe memories are encoded through these synaptic changes. But there`s a hitch in this thinking, because while mice and other mammals are awake, the synapses throughout its brain tend to be strengthened, not weakened, pushing the system toward its maximum load. When neurons are maxed out and constantly firing, they lose their capacity to convey information, stymieing learning and memory. The results suggest that synapses are restructured throughout the mouse brain every 12 hours or so, which is quite remarkable.
