Sleep is incredibly important to health, both physical and mental. Sleep experts agree that sleep should not be neglected, as lack of sleep negatively affects health and contributes to the development of many diseases. However, studying how the brain works during sleep can help scientists learn more about not only the brain, but also Alzheimer's disease. According to a study published in the journal Science, during sleep, the brain gets rid of unnecessary memories, deciding what information to keep and what to get rid of.
How and why do we forget information?
We rarely think about what complex processes occur in the human brain. For example, how memory works. In fact, this is an active process, but how exactly we forget information during different phases of sleep, scientists know very little.
A team of scientists from the International Center for Neuroscience has discovered that during REM sleep - when the eyes are actively moving, special nerve cells appear that contribute to oblivion. Neurons that produce melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) are located in the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that helps perform important functions such as sleep, appetite, and emotional control. Previous studies have shown that these neurons help control REM sleep by activating MCH neurons, which increases the duration of this sleep phase.
The human brain - is still the greatest mystery in existence today.
A team of researchers examined MCG neurons in mice. In their study, the researchers found that 52.8% of MCGs were active during REM sleep, compared to just 35% of MCGs during wakefulness. When the researchers tested the ability of mice to memorize information, they artificially activated the MCH neurons to turn them on and off. This helped establish that in order for memories to stop forming, ICG neurons send messages to the hippocampus.
According to lead author Thomas Kilduff, the team was surprised to find that mice are better at learning and remembering when MCH neurons are inactive. This means that the activity of MCG neurons contributes to the fact that we forget information faster.
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Why sleep disorders are dangerous?
Recent research in Alzheimer's disease suggests that sleep disturbances cause a protein called amyloid beta, associated with a neurodegenerative condition, to accumulate faster in the brain, and vice versa. Thus, good sleep can slow this process down. Moreover, healthy sleep helps prolong youth and improve cognitive abilities and skills of a person.
Sleep disturbances carry the risk of developing serious diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and depression.
However, scientists cannot answer the burning question of whether the activity of MCG neurons is the reason that we forget dreams, if we just open our eyes, scientists cannot answer with 100% certainty. Most likely, the reason lies in the fact that the subjects in the study were rodents and not people. Nevertheless, experts do not exclude that we tend to forget what we saw in a dream precisely because of the activity of the MCG neurons. Also, scientists do not hope that their research will help to learn more about Alzheimer's disease and how to treat it.
Lyubov Sokovikova