![]() ![]() So, what if scientists could find a way to reboot deep sleep as we get older? Prof Penelope Lewis, a sleep researcher at the University of Cardiff, believes this could be possible. Deep sleep is also considered important for memory consolidation and the regulation of blood glucose. We release growth hormone during it, helping to repair muscles, bones and immune cells. “Your dishwasher only works at 20% capacity,” Nedergaard says.ĭeep sleep isn’t only important for keeping the brain clean. The glymphatic system also shows a dramatic decrease in efficacy as we enter our later years. This system seems to be most active during slow-wave sleep – the deepest phase of non-rapid eye movement sleep, predominating during the early hours of the morning.įor reasons that aren’t yet fully understood, people experience less of this kind of sleep as they get older. “As soon as people woke up, this flow pattern would disappear.” “We saw these large waves of fluid flow that started to wash over the brain about every 20 seconds or so, and could travel quite long distances inside the brain,” she says. Lewis has expanded on Nedergaard’s studies by persuading human volunteers to have their brains imaged while they sleep. Other researchers have suggested that the glymphatic system could provide a missing link between disrupted sleep and mood disorders such as bipolar, or psychiatric diseases including schizophrenia. However, Nedergaard believes the system could be important for the clearance of many other molecules from the tau protein that accumulates in Parkinson’s disease to lactic acid, which builds up in the brain when we are awake and has been linked to seizures, to inflammatory molecules produced by immune cells resident in the brain. Other studies have found an association between lifelong sleep disruption, elevated levels of amyloid, and Alzheimer’s risk. Nedergaard showed that significantly more beta-amyloid was removed from the brain during sleep. One such molecule is beta-amyloid, a toxic protein that accumulates inside the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, and disrupts brain cell function. “Just as if you don’t have a filter in an aquarium, the fish will die in their own dirt, all this stuff accumulates in the brain that needs to be removed,” Nedergaard says. Having such a system is important because your neurons are extremely active during the day, and produce waste that needs to go somewhere. They found a series of tiny channels surrounding the brain’s blood vessels that allow CSF to filter in, and get pushed through the brain tissue by the pulse of blood alongside – and dubbed it “the glymphatic system”, because it is similar to the body’s lymphatic network except managed by the brain’s glial (support) cells. ![]() ![]() Fortunately, scientists are homing in on ways to boost this kind of sleep, which could ultimately help to keep our brains healthier for longer.ĭoctors have long recognised the restorative properties of sleep, but it wasn’t until 2012 that Prof Maiken Nedergaard at the University of Rochester Medical Centre, in the US, and her colleagues identified a previously unknown plumbing system in the brain that springs to life during sleep, and enables the organ to clean itself. We tend to get less deep sleep as we get older, making it harder to clear out the debris. If we don’t get enough regular sleep, these toxic byproducts can accumulate, gradually increasing our risk of dementia and brain diseases. ![]() Sleep is a very active state for the brain – and it seems to be a special state for fluid flow within the brain,” says Laura Lewis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, in the US, who has imaged this pumping process in sleeping humans. “Sleep is not just a state where things turn off. ![]()
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