While we are asleep, our brain takes advantage of it to assimilate all the information received during the day. Although this is something that has been known for a long time, scientists are now beginning to understand how all this happens in our brains. A team of researchers from the Hospital Clínico de Barcelona has studied the synchrony between neurons during sleep , a process that is essential to consolidate memory, and presents its results at the congress of the European Federation of Neuroscientific Societies (FENS), which is held celebrate these days in Barcelona.
During sleep, brain activity does not stop, and in the deep sleep phase so-called 'slow brain waves' are produced. Recent studies have shown that the network of neurons that emit these waves interacts with the activity of brain centers located in the innermost parts of the brain. These connections are activated and deactivated throughout the night, generating rhythmic patterns that alternate periods of activity with periods of silence . Apparently, this synchrony is essential for processes related to memory and learning.
"As with the music created by an orchestra we can intuit the quality of the musicians, their degree of coordination or their knowledge of the score, the activity generated by the brain tells us a lot about the functional structure of the underlying network" he explained María Sánchez Vives, head of the investigation.
