Surprise with proof that we sleep is to forget

Most of us believe that sleep is a way to save and restore energy after a day of activity. Some other theories suggest that sleep is an opportunity for the brain to clean up dead cells. Some people even believe that sleeping in animals is actually just how they lie dormant to avoid enemies.

But according to two recent studies, scientists have found evidence that the purpose of sleep is to forget some memories.

Since 2003, two biologists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli have come to the conclusion that the process of cell binding increases as the brain is busy all day. When we sleep, the brain eliminates these relationships to cut off signals with background noise.

Many years later, they also found other indirect evidence to prove that the hypothesis of sleep as electromagnetic waves emitted by the brain will reduce the process of cell binding during the process. people sleep.

Four years later, Luisa de Vivo - a research assistant working in the laboratory when observing the tissues in some rats and sleepers, discovered the shape and size of 6,920 stool cells. period She also discovered an amazing change: diverging cells in the brains of sleeping mice smaller than 18% of the cells of the worms.

In the second study, Dr. Graham H. Diering and colleagues from Johns Hopkins University investigated protein cells in the rat brain.

They found that the number of cell binding processes dwindled because hundreds of different protein cells increased or decreased during sleep. But, a single protein is also extremely important in the process of cell binding outside this process - Homer1A.

Dr. Diering and colleagues continue to investigate further and find that when sleeping, Homer1A proteins will become a " trimming machine " that helps the brain forget some things.

The researchers conducted a memory test for mice. They put them in a closed room and used a light injection to stab them. Only one group of mice was injected with a chemical to inhibit neurons that were not involved in the cell binding process (anesthesia) while the rest of the mice would sleep as usual.

The next day, all mice were frightened when placed in the room the previous day because they recalled the electric shock. But when placed in another room, the chemically injected mice were still frightened, standing still, the normal mice ran and looked around the room.

" Our findings show that mice, and perhaps humans, will store information only before it is recalibrated. Without sleep and without recalibration during sleep, memories will be lost , " said Dr. Diering.

However, some researchers are cautious about these evidence. According to them, it is difficult to give a reasonable explanation for the question "what do we sleep for?".

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