• Question: Do you study sleep in neuroscience?

    Asked by anon-256709 to Elena on 17 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: Elena Lazarova

      Elena Lazarova answered on 17 Jun 2020:

      Hi Wiktoria and thank you for your question! I am afraid I am not a neuroscientist and I do not study sleep either.
      However, sleep is indeed a topic in neuroscience. Scientists studying sleep focus on the neuroscientific and physiological basis of the nature of sleep and its functions. I looked through the profiles of the scientists here and there is Andrew Beale (/medical20-zone/profile/andrewbeale/) who investigates why we sleep! You can ask him a question about it.

Comments

  • Photo: Gulnar

    Gulnar commented on :

    Hello Wictoria. Thank you for an interesting question.

    Although I am not a neuroscientist, I want to share some information with you.

    As you know, sleep is an essential factor in our development. It generally occurs in 2 stages: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM)or slow-wave sleep (SWS). During REM sleep, brain activity is similar to activities when we are awake; however, we have slow rhythms in slow-wave sleep, which happens more at the beginning of the night. Sleep has various functions. It refreshes our minds; helps to memorize necessary things forget some unnecessary things; keeps brain optimally active, etc. 
    It is currently known that sleep can help clearance of debris, toxins out of our brains that are collected in waking hours. For instance, beta-amyloid, a peptide involved in Alzheimer’s disease, make clumps with each other in Alzheimer’s patients’ brains and disrupts the connections and memory function. In a normal brain, they are being cleared. By cleaning this debris, sleep contributes to the treatment and prevention of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. The recent study (2019) represents how the body is able to remove all of that garbage during sleep: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6465/628/tab-pdf.
    Another study by Daniel Margoliash and others shows that sleep is important for song learning in juvenile birds. Generally, the song learning process consists of 2 phases. The first stage is the sensory stage, in which birds memorize a tutor song. Then, in the second phase or sensorimotor phase, they use sensory memory as a ‘template’ and purify it by practicing in order to achieve adult singing patterns. It is identified that during sleep the brain plays back patterns of daytime activity. For more information: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn0505-546.
    In addition, lack of sleep is very dangerous for our health. It can increase anger, affect body weight, lead to serious problems, including obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.
    I hope this information helped.   

  • Photo: Gabriela

    Gabriela commented on :

    Hi WiktoriaB. I am not a neuroscientist but I do study sleep in my research. The brain center that regulates sleep also regulates other sensations such as hunger, so hunger and sleep/wakefulness are linked. Hunger is an important phenomenon to want to understand if, like me, you are interested in obesity and diabetes (which is linked to obesity), so I also have an interest in sleep. Certainly what I see in my mouse models is that disrupted eating patterns also interfere with sleep (i.e. they are also eating at times of day when they normally should be sleeping). I guess what I wanted to say is that research doesn’t always have clear boundaries and scientists frequently work in more than one domain.