When we don’t get enough sleep, parts of the neurons in our cerebral cortex take a break in the form of a short “nap” while we stay awake. These neuronal “blackouts” may be responsible “for theattention lapse, thepoor cognitive performance, theblunders, impaired judgment orirritabilitythat appear after being awake for many hours, even if we do not feel sleepy “, clarifies Giulio Tononi, researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) and co-author of the study. The most curious thing, according to Tononi, is that in the brain deprived of Sleep groups of neurons switch off in areas of the cerebral cortex while the rest remain awake.
To reach this conclusion, Tononi and his colleagues forced a group of rats to stay awake for several hours. Then, recording the electrical activity of their cerebral cortex, they observed that, although the EEGs indicated that they were awake, they hadintervals in which parts of the brain were switched off. And this affected the cognitive performance of the animals. The periods in which neurons turn off increased as the time of forced wakefulness lengthened.
What’s more, according to Thomas R. Insel, director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, which co-funded the study, the research “suggests thatsleep deprivation in adolescence could have adverse emotional and cognitive consequencesthat could affect brain development. “
